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February 1, 2025
DEBUT Struggling true-crime writer and recent widow Alex Kelley on assignment in a small Vermont town in the dead of winter to research and ghostwrite a book about the unsolved mysteries at an abandoned orphanage. The main case is the 1968 disappearance of nine-year-old Tommy, who is said to have run away, but conflicting stories from staff and children who lived there at the time suggest a nun might have drowned him. As Alex begins meeting key players in the orphanage's story, she discovers a woman's body in the lake, and it becomes clear more that lives might be at stake. Seybolt, who drew inspiration from the real-life St. Joseph's Orphanage in Burlington, intersperses the narrative of Alex's investigation with transcripts of witness testimony from orphans in the facility. She delivers an intriguing plot with plenty of twists and turns, but unfortunately none of the characters, including Alex, is very sympathetic, and it is hard to get invested in the story when none of the characters has a clear tie to the missing boy. VERDICT Seybolt's first effort is a solid mystery that fans of atmospheric thrillers may enjoy. Recommended mainly for larger public library collections.--Carrie Voliva
Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from March 1, 2025
Seybolt blends true crime and fiction in this absorbing debut. The actual crimes, chronicled in Christine Kenneally's The Ghosts of the Orphanage: A Story of Mysterious Deaths, a Conspiracy of Silence, and a Search for Justice (2023), involved Catholic nuns and priests neglecting, abusing, and even murdering children under their care at an orphanage in Vermont. This new treatment builds on the revelations, adding the fictional element of a young woman author investigating the decades-old crimes and encountering fresh murder and peril for herself. Alex Kelley, a once-successful writer derailed by her husband's death, is attempting a comeback by ghostwriting a book about deaths at a Burlington, Vermont, orphanage called Coram House decades ago. Seybolt skillfully blends points of view about maltreatment from fictive victims with 1968 court testimony, along with Alex's quest to investigate despite all the obstacles that abuse-deniers, who include townspeople and former orphans themselves, throw in her way. And then Alex stumbles across the newly murdered body of one of the old nuns on a running path. Part Gothic novel (with creepy Coram House playing a role) and part investigative reporting procedural, this will both disturb and fascinate readers.
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