Absolutely stunning. Fans of Bianca Marais’ Hum If You Don’t Know the Words or Lesley Arimah’s What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky will like this. Written with the complexities of a Karin Slaughter mystery and the human agony of MR Carey’s Girl with All the Gifts— Williams follows Sabine, a German aid worker turned pet shelter employee, whose American niece Lily, daughter of Sabine’s deceased sister Hannah, has gone missing during her first aid mission in Uganda. Rose, a shattered soul who made it out of Ugandan rebel camps after nearly a decade, is missing her beau, Ocen, the twin of Rose’s first boyfriend who was also taken to the LRA camps years before. After her ultimate “burnout” Sabine is forced to fly back to the familiar Kitgum, Uganda to set out in search of her niece in spite of the lackluster help offered by local and international authorities.

The backstories of the German, Ugandan, American and Swiss (Christoph, anthropologist & employer of Rose) are incredibly enmeshed. There were several shocking moments along the way and I rooted for the characters to make it out of the bush together, and alive. Another splendid piece of this picture is the plethora of strong female archetypes. This is a seriously impressive debut novel.