What She Knew by Gilly MacMillman is a trip.
For me, it began before I even opened the book. What She Knew has an implication before the reader's eyes hit page one. So, there is a "she" and that person knows something. What does she know, for crying out loud?! That's the crux of the book, isn't it?
Charming and young, Benjamin Jenner goes missing during a weekend walk in the woods with his mom. It is a familiar trail, one that they walk regularly, and who could've imagined that their mother-son past time would lead to tragedy?
We see mom and dad (reunited after a not-altogether-amicable separation) frantically searching for clues or any indication of what may have happened to Ben. Police and search dogs examine every inch of the woods, turning up only evidence that whatever happened to Ben was not accidental. Everyone in his life is questioned -- parents, care takers, teachers, the school headmaster, the cashier at the corner store near his home -- all to no avail.
The media turns on Ben's mom, Rachel Jenner, and brands her as a neglectful parent that surely must have known that something was not right that day they went into the woods.
Mothers have intuition, right? The public lashes her with this outcry as some sort of altar to lay blame and make sense of what happened to a young child. How could you not know, they brandish.
So, what did the unfairly pariah'd Rachel know? What were her motherly instincts telling her to do?
And would the pieces come together in time to save Ben?