A Nice Safe Place: A Cutler Series Book 1 by Andrew Madigan
Next Chapter, August 2024
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One day, Amy Snyder disappears. Her father Wayne starts looking for her because the sheriff can’t be bothered. Who took her? There are a few sketchy people around: Jason, Amy’s boyfriend; Lupo, the middle-aged drug dealer who dates teenage girls; the creepy minister, Pastor Stone. Wayne searches all over the county but doesn’t find answers. As Wayne slowly discovers, Belvue isn’t the nice, safe place he thought it was.
Amy suddenly returns, but that’s just the beginning of her story. She’s quiet, thin, traumatized. She says a man kept her locked in a basement along with several other girls. Wayne takes her to the sheriff to make a statement, and she sees her captor’s face in a book of mug shots. Ray Loris, a cutler. Loris is arrested, but a few days later he’s released. There’s no material evidence at his home, no girls, not even a basement. And one more thing: Amy’s pregnant. She swears Loris isn’t the father, and neither is Jason, but she won’t say who is.
A Nice Safe Place follows Wayne as he searches for his daughter while other sections of the novel shift from the point of view of Amy to Loris to Pastor Stone. It is a story about a girl, her family, and a town that’s struggling through hard times. It’s also a story of family secrets and the terrible things people can do to one another, and a story of what it takes to heal.
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