The Undercurrent

An overwhelmed new mother becomes obsessed with the unsolved disappearance of a young girl from her small Texas hometown--and unearths her own family’s dark secret.

It’s 2011 and Deecie Jeffries’s missing person’s case in Austin, Texas, is still cold. New mom Bee, struggling with postpartum depression, is living in Portland, Maine, having left Austin-and those memories-far behind. Until Leo, her childhood crush and her estranged twin Gus’s best friend, suddenly resurfaces, drawing Bee back into their shared past.

Bee’s predictable life is upended, pushing her to return to her childhood home and piece together a neighborhood’s shattered history. Bee becomes consumed with a need to uncover the truth about Deecie’s disappearance and what happened to the families who lived across the field from one another--Gus, Leo, and their mothers: Mary, a homemaker, whose only escape is the local community theater, and Diana, a serious academic dedicated to her studies.

Told in multiple perspectives with two different timelines, The Undercurrent is a gripping portrait of motherhood, obsession, broken family bonds, and buried secrets.

Sarah Sawyer is an English teacher who lives and works at a boarding school in Western Massachusetts where she finds endless humor and inspiration in her colleagues and students. She is a graduate of Amherst College and the Bread Loaf School of English. The Undercurrent is her first novel.