With the haunting, moody prose of Tana French and the compulsive storytelling of Dervla McTiernan or Ann Cleeves, bestselling author Carlene O’Connor lures readers to a remote village on Ireland’s southwest coast, where winding windswept roads open to spectacular views of rugged cliffs against immense, lonely beaches…and some fear a mysterious cult could be connected to the disappearance of a young pregnant woman.
After two pregnant women in Dingle who have never met each receive a chilling email warning them that they’re in grave danger, the two decide to meet each other to figure out what is going on. But when one of the mothers, Shauna, a deaf woman, arrives at their meeting place at the village Spring Festival, she fears a trap and hurries off to meet the couple who plan to adopt her baby.
But the adoptive couple are discovered tied up in their home, telling a terrifying story of Shauna being abducted by a man wearing a butterfly mask, Detective Inspector Cormac O’Brien and Detective Sergeant Barbara Neely fear a repeat of a disturbing case from 29 years earlier, when a charismatic leader calling himself the Shepherd lured poor pregnant girls into his enigmatic cult.
Meanwhile, Dimpna Wilde has her hands full with lambing season and keeping track of her father, so she’s grateful for the help of a well-meaning 10-year-old boy, Dylan. But when the lad goes missing after bicycling to a bog on a dare, she is desperate to help find him. But somewhere, in a cold, dark room, Shauna is trapped with her unborn child’s and a mysterious boy. If she is to have any chance of getting out and away from the Moth Man, she’ll have to figure out the truth behind who she really is and how that connects to the ordeal she finds herself in now. But time is running out, and her baby will be born soon . . .