Two Thousand Minnows

An "honest, compelling, and smart" memoir about growing up with an abusive father and the desperate search for a missing sister (Holly Goldberg Sloan, New York Times–bestselling author of Counting by 7s).

Raised in the city, it took Sandra some time to get used to her new home in West Virginia, but she soon found the forests, rivers, and mountains safer than the house that held her volatile father. Exploring the outdoors was a welcome distraction from the violence waiting at home.

But then her mother became pregnant. And Sandra's concern for her family grew when her mother returned home from the hospital without a baby.

In Two Thousand Minnows, Sandra reflects on the events of her childhood and adolescence, including the time spent traveling across the country with her anxious, worn-out family in a small, cramped car. As she grows older, she realizes that what they're chasing when they move from town to town—the perfect, stable life—could never exist for her until she found the answers to all the questions she never asked. As an adult, Sandra decides to stop running from the past and instead revisits it, refusing to give up until she unearths the truth—and finds the sister who never came home.

"Like many stories of survival . . . it's likely to offer welcome comfort to readers who endured childhood traumas themselves." —Publishers Weekly

"One of the great literary discoveries of the year." —Holly Goldberg Sloan, New York Times–bestselling author of Counting by 7s

"I stayed up late, caught up in this story of a West Virginia girl's search for a lost baby—and her own truest self." —Laura Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements