She tried to forget the horrors of war–but her quiet hometown conceals a litany of new evils.Sergeant Camille Waresch did everything she could to forget Iraq. She went home to Eastern Washington and got a quiet job. She connected with her daughter, Sophie, whom she had left as a baby. She got sober. But the ghosts of her past were never far behind.While conducting a routine property tax … conducting a routine property tax inspection on an isolated ranch, Camille discovers a teenager’s tortured corpse hanging in a dilapidated outbuilding. In a flash, her combat-related PTSD resurges–and in her dreams, the hanging boy merges with a young soldier whose eerily similar death still haunts her. The case hits home when Sophie reveals that the victim was her ex-boyfriend–and as Camille investigates, she uncovers a tangled trail that leads to his jealous younger brother and her own daughter, wild, defiant, and ensnared.
The closer Camille gets to the truth, the closer she is driven to the edge. Her home is broken into. Her truck is blown up. Evidence and witnesses she remembers clearly are erased. And when Sophie disappears, Camille’s hunt for justice becomes a hunt for her child. At a remote compound where the terrifying truth is finally revealed, Camille has one last chance to save her daughter–and redeem her own shattered soul.
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Little Falls by Elizabeth Lewes is an intense debut suspense/thriller/mystery mash-up from this author and I would be interested in seeing it become a series. I was pulled right into the story which not only has plenty of action and suspense, but it is seen by the reader through the eyes of the main character who is still suffering from PTSD after returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Camille Waresch returned to her small hometown in Eastern Washington after serving several tours as a frontline medic. She is trying to connect with her teenage daughter who grew up with Camille’s parents while she was overseas and is always angry with her, deal with her PTSD and keep her job as a county property tax inspector. Her father also left her the local gas mart as a permanent income and place to live about the shop.
While doing a routine property tax inspection, Camille discovers a badly tortured young boy hung by barbwire in a barn. She immediately has a severe PTSD flashback to a similar scene from her time in Iraq. The two victims merge in her dreams and she does not know if she can trust her memories, but the dead boy was her daughter’s boyfriend and she becomes involved in the investigation over the concerns of her childhood friend, Sergeant Darren Moses.
The closer Camille gets to the truth the more danger she is in. The gas mart is broken into, her truck in blown up and evidence she discovers for Darren disappears. The two cases, past and present converge. Her daughter disappears and she has one last chance to save her daughter and herself.
I love a protagonist like Camille when they are trying to be “normal”, but everyone and everything is against them. I feel the author did a great job of portraying her PTSD, difficulty in returning to civilian life and the inability to tell if Camille was telling the truth, remembering something from the past or having false memories. The plot moves at a fast pace between past and present and occasionally I was confused because you are only viewing everything through Camille’s eyes. I am hoping Ms. Lewes picks up these characters again in future books because I think there is still so much she can do with Camille and the other secondary characters.
I recommend this debut suspense/thriller/mystery and I am hoping for more.
Finding a tortured dead body hanging in a barn rattles county assessor Camille Waresch, but it doesn’t shock her. Struggling with PTSD, she thinks back to the other body she found. Her soldier. Her responsibility.
When she’s tapped by the medical examiner to help with the initial crime scene examination, Camille realizes though separated by years and thousands of miles, there are too many similarities in both deaths.
Though she’s warned several times, Camille continues with her own investigation. In her mind, she believes finding out what happened to the second victim will bring the justice the first victim never received, and bring her peace of mind. Her search for answers takes on new meaning when Camille learns her rebellious fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie, knew the young man and is still involved with the acquaintances he left behind.
Told entirely from Camille’s point of view, Little Falls is an emotional read. Her mental anguish leaps off the page not just because of her military service, but guilt over the soldier she feels she didn’t do enough for; anger and frustration at the way the military treated her for wanting to do the right thing; and her own self-loathing for what she considers her personal failures, like motherhood.
Many around her think Camille is crazy… and sometimes even she believes she’s losing it. Her PTSD is extreme, but she’s not crazy. She could benefit from some long-term counseling, but she’s not crazy. And she’d probably refuse the counseling, anyway.
When Sophie goes missing, Camille isn’t just a mother looking for her child, but a soldier on a mission, and it is something to behold! The ending is good, with resolutions, but I feel bad for this fictional character who to me represents the veterans who never get the help they need.
A solid read with good writing and strong characters, Little Falls will appeal to readers of multiple genres, especially mystery and suspense.
Enjoy!
Elizabeth Lewes has astounded me with her debut novel. It’s one of those books that your hands end up hurting because you’re gripping it so hard as you focus. We get to experience the PTSD that Camille is living with by viewing the story from her POV. It doesn’t take long to question if what she’s experiencing is real or a part of her condition.
Her return to civilian life is challenging and often frustrating. Adding a teenager to the mix really ups the stakes of day-to-day survival for Camille. Her job as a tax accessor should be cut and dry and far from her military career as a frontline medic; but then she discovers a gruesome scene.
The discovery of the body hanging in a barn pulls her mind back to events that occurred in Iraq. This is where I began to feel my breathing uptick and heart pound a little harder as it was more difficult to determine reality from false memories caused by the PTSD. Questioning the actions and events made my mind go in multiple directions as possibilities for what was going on.
When Sophie disappears, I felt a big shift in emotion. Camille already has a lot on her plate. Sophie’s running crowd isn’t who I’d want my kids hanging with; but that added to the story.
Although I wasn’t overly happy about where the book left us at the end, I feel like it’s a raw depiction of just how deep PTSD goes in people’s lives. As a reader, we often want to see improvement, happy endings, and redemption. But I think Lewes leaves us with open, raw wounds that may not ever heal. We simply have to accept that these are the facts. It’s not pretty and often quite dark. I would have liked to have given this 5 stars, but I felt some secondary characters needed to be slightly more developed.
I received a complimentary copy of the book for reviewing purposes. All opinions are my own.
An absolute must read! This book had me sitting for hours on end, desperate to find out answers, and is perfect for anyone looking for such a complex, involving story line you can really get your teeth into. I was completely blown away with how well this book is written and Camille’s character and her PTSD was so well crafted. The author is such a talented writer and I can’t wait to read more work from her in future!
Returning home from her deployment in Iraq, Sergeant Camille Waresch is working for the county and adapting to civilian life. Her daughter is now fifteen and has no intention of listening to Camille. Doing an inspection for the county, Camille finds a young man hanging in a barn…a young man who has been tortured. This flashes her back to a time in Iraq when she witnessed a young soldier that was killed in the same manner. Or is it her PTSD? Camille can’t leave the investigation alone and is warned by Sergeant Darren Moses to stay out of his investigation. When she is threatened and worried about her daughter’s safety, Carrie takes matters in to her own hands. The back and forth flashbacks to her military tour of duty made the story confusing at times. I received an advance review copy at no cost and without obligation for an honest review. (by paytonpuppy)
Debut author Elizabeth Lewes tells a haunting story of trauma, justice, and redemption in Little Falls.
This story is a tense, action packed book. If you want for plenty of gun fights, explosions, and desperate chases, with the clock ticking a countdown toward certain death, this book will satisfy you. And if you like cliff-hanger endings, it’s got you covered, too.
But it’s also a book with interesting insights into the deceptions of memory, and the way trauma impacts humans and how they think, act, or simply live life.
CAMILLE AND PTSD
What was most unforgettable for me was the way Lewes wove Camille’s PTSD into the story. In a way, her trauma is the story. On the outside, Camille is tough as nails, the very definition of resilience. Inside, she’s frightened and paranoid and haunted by memories of war, particularly the hanging death of a young soldier. She struggles to separate the past and present in her mind.
At times, I wondered what Camille was like before the war, before the trauma. It’s hard to see who she is as a person apart from that. Then I realized that’s the point: the PTSD is part of who she is now, and she can’t–perhaps ever–untangle her self from those memories. It will always be there.
Camille is an unreliable narrator. At this point in publishing, unreliable narrators almost outnumber the reliable ones in the suspense/thriller genre. It would be easy for Camille to become just another one of that number of ultimately-forgettable, often-female narrators who can’t be trusted because (fill in the blank).
But Lewes doesn’t allow that to happen. Camille is distinct. Her trauma is uniquely hers. Lewes is a military veteran herself; her experience and research give the descriptions of wartime violence a realistic feel.
But the book’s depth is more than simply realism. It lies in the empathetic and compassionate way she views Camille. Even when Camille acts daft, reacting with suspicion toward people who love her (which frustrated me!) I saw why she behaved that way.
Lewes handles the issue of trauma and memory with a depth and understanding not often seen in this genre. (Though Camille would probably bristle at the suggestion that she needs something touchy-feely like compassion, rather than more ammo for her gun.)
OTHER CHARACTERS
The other characters are a mixed bag of sympathetic and not-so-sympathetic and can-you-believe-how-horrible-this-person-is! type unsympathetic people.
It’s easy to like RHONDA, Camille’s employee. It’s easy to hate the teen’s killers.
But it’s harder to know how to react to teenage SOPHIE, her daughter. For the most part, she feels like a stereotypical teenager. She seems intent on screaming at her mom, slamming doors, and disobeying every parental rule. She’s still grieving the death of her grandfather, Camille’s father, but she’s also running with a dangerous crowd.
I didn’t feel like there was as much nuance to her character as there was to Camille. The most fascinating thing is watching the mother-daughter relationship develop, especially because the mother isn’t as clear-thinking as the parent of a teenager needs to be! Though it’s clear that Camille loves her daughter, she has absolutely no idea how to parent her.
Add to the cast of characters various law enforcement officials, including a possible love interest; her manipulative ex-lover’s brother; the dead teenager’s parents; and townspeople who aren’t certain how to treat Camille. Lewes does a good job creating some intriguing characters. None are as deeply developed as Camille, though, and many are unpleasant. Considering the type of crime we’re dealing with here, that’s understandable even if it’s uncomfortable to read.
PLOT
If all this makes it sound like a character-driven literary novel, the type where nothing happens, don’t worry: it’s not. Lewes plunges us into a murder mystery that is equal parts horrifying and fascinating. Toward the end of the book, the suspense was nerve-racking. I didn’t want to stop reading to do anything so banal as housework, and Camille wouldn’t let me. She commanded my attention from the first page to the last. Though I did foresee a few of the twists, it didn’t diminish my enjoyment one bit!
ONE FAVORITE THING. . .
I loved LYLE, Sophie’s uncle. He’s her father’s brother. While he’s manipulative and mooches off anyone who’ll give him money (or anything free), I still felt sympathy for the guy. He’s the perpetual underdog, and I always sympathize with fictional underdogs. (Even when I shouldn’t!) He obviously loves his niece, and though he’s hardly a model parental figure, sometimes he has better insights into Sophie’s brain than Camille does.
OVERALL
In the end, Little Falls satisfied my need for a literary thriller. Camille is a character who won’t be forgotten any time soon. I look forward to reading more of Lewes’s work. 3 1/2 stars, rounded up to 4.
Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and Elizabeth Lewes, the author, for a review copy of Little Falls in exchange for an honest review. I wasn’t required to write a positive review. Thanks also to Emma Welton of damppebbles blog tours for having me along!