Kate Alice Marshall’s latest novel, THE GIRLS BEFORE, is a chilling work of suspense that pairs a small-town legend of female rage with a pattern of missing girls and a search-and-rescue volunteer who refuses to give up the chase.

Stranger is alone in the realest sense. Abandoned in a cold, damp bunker by her abductor, she has not seen daylight for as long as she can remember. All she has now are a wooden bedframe; a thin, stained mattress; a chain that keeps her shackled to the wall; a toilet…and the girls before. Thinly veiled, gossamer-like and ethereal, the ghosts of the girls who called the bunker home before her speak to her, not only in barely-there whispers, but in the scrawled and scratched messages they left on the walls that once imprisoned them. Don’t waste battery. Don’t use name. Save food. Toilet = water. And, most hauntingly, a list of their own names.

Stranger knows that, realistically, she soon will have to add her own warnings to theirs, her own name to the list hidden just out of sight. But unlike the girls before, she has a weapon: time. Her captor has disappeared for far too long, and with his absence comes time to plan, to carve, to wiggle at the deadbolts that keep her confined. But will time be enough to save her without food or water?

"[I]t is Marshall’s delicate, tender portrayals of captivity, victimhood and survivor’s guilt that make THE GIRLS BEFORE shine.... Even as she’s describing the mundane and harmless, she keeps readers on their backfoot, never letting them settle into comfort for too long."

Above ground, Audrey Dixon leads a search-and-rescue group. But Audrey --- nicknamed “Lucky” for her ability to locate just about anyone --- isn’t searching for Stranger, or any teen girl, at least not on this trip. She has been assigned to the relatively normal case of a missing toddler who wandered off and likely found a mossy clearing in which to nap. Her team does find the boy, but that’s not all. You see, unlike her fellow volunteers, Audrey has a vested interest in tracking down the missing, all thanks to the one girl she couldn’t save.

Audrey met Janie when they were 12. Like everyone else who came into contact with 12-going-on-20 Janie, she was instantly captivated by the reckless, old-beyond-her-years girl. But friendship with Janie came at a price. Beyond her regular unannounced departures, Janie could be mean and was all too happy to relegate Audrey to the role of her dowdy best friend while she took the spotlight and attention. This eventually led to the dissolution of their friendship, punctuated only by a brief return before Janie disappeared for good. Already a bit of a runaway, a bit neglected and a bit too mature for her age, Janie was never really looked for, and now Audrey sees her in every missing girl.

This is never more true than when Meghan Vale disappears. A local teen with few friends and way more problems, Meghan often hinted that she wanted to run away. So her disappearance is barely looked into, especially since she is nearly an adult at 17. Add to that the fact that she was obsessed with the legend of Jenny Red-Hands, the ghost of a woman who went missing and now accepts offerings from girls and women who have been wronged by men, and you have the makings of a “troubled girl,” whose disappearance is accepted rather than worried about.

Before she vanished, Meghan had taken to wearing a necklace of white beads --- symbolic of teeth --- known in their small community as a token of faith to Jenny Red-Hands, proof that the wearer was either wronged by a man or willing to wrong one herself. When Audrey is investigating the missing toddler, she happens upon a necklace of white beads in the woods and senses that it has something to do with Meghan.

The problem is that the necklace is discovered on the grounds of the Hills, local notables whose family name is unimpeachable. Although Audrey senses that the beads have something to do with Meghan, who has been missing for over three months, the Hills’ land is private, and the local sheriff is unwilling to look into anything involving their name. But Audrey grew up with the now-adult children --- from football star Andrew to Congresswoman Melinda, and even Emily, the youngest and most ignored of the Hills. It is Emily to whom Audrey begins to share her suspicions about Meghan’s disappearance. Emily seems to know more about her family, their land and even Janie than Audrey ever could have expected.

Kate Alice Marshall weaves a tale of missing girls, ignorant adults and a legend come to life. Readers can expect many of the same tightly plotted, creative twists that she is known for, but this time with a witchy, mythological twist that asks what happens when a legend becomes real and what it means for the stories it comes to symbolize. Audrey is one of Marshall’s strongest protagonists. Her reckonings with her teenage self versus her adult self are poignant and tender, full of the myriad trappings of female friendship and coming of age, but peppered through with true grit. That said, the book also tends toward the convoluted, with many of the later twists coming at a mad dash with little to no warning.

In the end, though, it is Marshall’s delicate, tender portrayals of captivity, victimhood and survivor’s guilt that make THE GIRLS BEFORE shine. Seeing the lengths to which Audrey’s town is willing to go to protect their most lauded family is scintillating --- chillingly so --- and carries that same raw grit for which Marshall is known. What really stands out, though, is the atmospheric sense of dread and mistrust with which she infuses her plot. Even when you meet a smiling, welcoming character on the page, something in your gut tells you not to trust them. That’s the gift of a Kate Alice Marshall novel. Even as she’s describing the mundane and harmless, she keeps readers on their backfoot, never letting them settle into comfort for too long.

As THE GIRLS BEFORE reminds us, there is always another missing girl, an ignored, neglected child, and it is through books like this that we learn how to acknowledge, help and champion them.