This Wild Silence - Tapa dura

"I like to tell Liz that I'm her dark side," says Christine, narrator of Lucy Jane Bledsoe's newest novel. And Christine and her sister, Liz, are indeed opposites. Christine, a doctor in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, is buried in her work and cannot connect meaningfully with any of the women with whom she falls in love. Liz, married to her high school sweetheart, Mark, has an outwardly perfect life, but her fierce control is beginning to falter. Both sisters share a secret, one that has bound them tightly to each other for decades. Timothy, their little brother, disappeared 30 years ago, and the sisters' guilt over this event continues to haunt them both. During a winter expedition in California's Sierra Nevada mountains with Liz, Mark, Lenny (their current juvenile delinquent charge), and Mark's assistant, Melody, an undercurrent of tension bursts into open hostility when a sudden storm traps them all on the mountain. The sister's lifetime of deception is gradually and heartbreakingly revealed, and finally, in this harsh and dangerous environment, secrets are exposed and lies give way to the kind of healing truth that provides a possibility for hope.