In THE USUAL SILENCE, award-winning author Jenny Milchman introduces readers to a highly complex character. Arles Shepherd is a psychologist who suffers from childhood trauma and now finds herself tending to troubled and mistreated children in her own practice. The book has the expected clever plotting that Milchman is famous for and features a number of characters she brilliantly will link together by fate, with the “silence” metaphor playing a heavy role in the narrative.

We first meet up with an unemployed man from Maine, Cassius Monroe, who overslept and hopes he didn’t miss the bus pickup for his 12-year-old daughter, Bea. He walks his lengthy driveway down to the main road but does not see her. He waits to no avail and phones his wife, Maggie, to see if she might have heard from her. The school confirms that she left and was not scheduled for any after-school activities. Their next panicked call is to the local sheriff to report her missing.

"THE USUAL SILENCE will frighten, shock and uplift anyone who reads it and shows Milchman at the top of her game."

We next see Arles being called before the board at Wedeskyull Community Hospital in New York’s Adirondack mountain region and surprisingly fired over a complaint from the parent of one of her patients. She takes this opportunity to reinvent her career. She moves into a large property that has a handful of cabins. This will become her own family therapy center, where the families of her patients will live communally while receiving treatment.

One patient Arles seeks out is Geary, a 10-year-old autistic boy who lives downstate with his mother, Louise. Geary will be a particular challenge as he has not said a word since the age of two. Meanwhile, Cass and Maggie are in their own therapy as the search for Bea continues. Cass eventually turns to true crime podcasts and begins corresponding with two people who run a popular one with some history of success. They are willing to do anything to help get their daughter back. We are presented with Bea and a nameless male figure who is obviously her abductor. But we are not given any motive for this criminal act, and we have no idea where they are heading in his van.

While Arles is struggling to find a way to communicate with Geary, Bea is being subjected to forced bouts of silence by her captor, who does not wish to hear from her when he is not looking for an answer to one of his many questions. Cass and Maggie start to think that their lonely widower neighbor, Don, may be involved somehow. When they make an excuse to visit him in his solitary existence, they search for a clue and find one of Bea’s sweaters in his shed. Don pleads his innocence, claiming that she used to spend time with his late wife over the years.

Arles has been having a lot of one-on-one interactions with Geary, who she was told is completely non-communicative. But she swears he mouthed the word “hurry” to her. Additionally, she finds out that he has a thing for true crime podcasts and is particularly interested in one involving Bea.

All of this is quite chill-inducing but does not come close to how awe-inspiring it is to watch Jenny Milchman tie all of these characters together to find a solution not only to Bea and Geary’s situations, but also to Arles’ own traumatic past. THE USUAL SILENCE will frighten, shock and uplift anyone who reads it and shows Milchman at the top of her game.