The Lake and the Lost Girl

The Lake and the Lost Girl
360 Pages
ISBN 978-1-4926-4246-6

On a stormy night in 1939, the young poet, Mary Stone Walker disappears from her home in White Hill, Michigan. It was no secret that the talented woman was desperate to escape her demons but when Mary goes missing without a trace, one question lingers in the small town for decades: Did Mary successfully break free of her troubled past and find a new life, or did her life end that night?

Sixty years later, Lydia Carroll's husband is fixated on the local mystery. English professor Frank Carroll has invested years in the search for the local poet and her lost works, sacrificing his family, his reputation, and even Lydia for the ever-more-unlikely discovery. As Frank's behavior grows more erratic, Lydia fears his interest in Mary has evolved into an obsession -- one that threatens to destroy the family they have built together, and which can only be undone by solving once and for all the mystery of what happened to Mary on that rainy night in 1939.

The Lake and the Lost Girl is the riveting story of secrets from the past unraveling one family from the inside out, and two women, separated by sixty years of history, determined to pursue their dreams.

Jacquelyn Vincenta

About Jacquelyn Vincenta (Kalamazoo, Michigan Author)

Jacquelyn Vincenta

Born into the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, I only discovered in college how much I loved the vast fields and sky of the Midwest. I studied English and creative writing at the University of Iowa, and the countryside there set my heart on a path that would eventually lead to Michigan. But not before my first paid writing job, as police beat reporter for a daily newspaper in Louisiana, and various less-relevant employment, such as years managing the accounts for a Customs broker in Houston.

Michigan has been my home, physically and spiritually, since I was a young mother, and now that my children are grown I am still joyful every day to be living here, near the Great Lakes with their beautiful dunes, woods, rivers, orchards and towns. Years ago, with my former husband in a small southwest Michigan city, I founded and managed a publishing company that specialized in international trade publications. We built it up from a kitchen counter project we hoped might support us while we raised our children, into a multi-media operation that was eventually purchased by Thomson Reuters.

Now, at my home in Kalamazoo, I write fiction and non-fiction, read a wide variety of literature, spend time on local Earth-care projects, volunteer at Michigan lighthouses, and cherish the amazing people in my life. I enjoy the world by foot, bicycle and kayak, from time to time wandering foreign lands, everywhere gathering experiences and questions to take back to my writing desk.