‘Leave No Trace,’ An All-New Novel From Mindy Mejia, Due Out This September
The Real Book Spy
This September, Mindy Mejia, author of the hit 2017 thriller Everything You Want Me To Be, is gearing up to release an all-new psychological thriller called Leave No Trace.
While her last book dealt with the murder of a mysterious girl named Hattie Hoffman who was found brutally stabbed to death, her new thriller follows an assistant language therapist tasked with finding a way to connect with a boy who suddenly reappears after previously vanishing a decade earlier.
While both novels stand totally on their own, they do share something in common. . . both books are set in Minnesota, Mejia’s home state.
“In 2013 I read the incredible story of Ho Van Thanh and Lang, who escaped the Vietnam War and lived in the jungle for over forty years before returning to their village,” said Mejia in an exclusive statement to The Real Book Spy.
“What would it be like, I wondered, to be a grown man meeting modern society for the first time? That’s when Lucas Blackthorn was born.
“The Blackthorns vanished into one of the last great wildernesses in the United States and a place near my heart and home, the Boundary Waters. As I wrote more about the Blackthorns and about Maya—the therapist trying to uncover the truth behind their disappearance—the book also became a meditation on family. Everything You Want Me To Be dealt largely with identity and self-actualization, but we aren’t shaped in a vacuum. Our families play a formative role in who we become and Leave No Traceexplores those relationships, the indelible, sometimes excruciating bonds between parents and children.”
Check out the plot details for Leave No Trace below.
From the author of the “compelling” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis) and critically acclaimed Everything You Want Me to Be, a riveting and suspenseful thriller about the mysterious disappearance of a boy and his stunning return ten years later.
There is a place in Minnesota with hundreds of miles of glacial lakes and untouched forests called the Boundary Waters. Ten years ago a man and his son trekked into this wilderness and never returned.
Search teams found their campsite ravaged by what looked like a bear. They were presumed dead until a decade later…the son appeared. Discovered while ransacking an outfitter store, he was violent and uncommunicative and sent to a psychiatric facility. Maya Stark, the assistant language therapist, is charged with making a connection with their high-profile patient. No matter how she tries, however, he refuses to answer questions about his father or the last ten years of his life
But Maya, who was abandoned by her own mother, has secrets, too. And as she’s drawn closer to this enigmatic boy who is no longer a boy, she’ll risk everything to reunite him with his father who has disappeared from the known world.
Everything You Want Me To Be, which Book Bub called “1 of 12 books Gone Girl fans should have on their wish lists,” is now available in paperback. If you still haven’t read it and you enjoy mind-bending psychological thrillers, run and don’t walk to get your copy as soon as possible.
Though it’s not scheduled to come out until September 4th, Leave No Trace is already available for pre-order here or anywhere else books are sold. In the meantime, make sure you’re following Mindy Mejia on Twitter and Facebook, and be sure to check out her official website.
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.
