Leave No Trace ★★★★ Mindy Mejia, Quercus, R270

This book has nothing to do with the recent indie movie of the same name, although both involve forests and both are dark with loss but tempered by the fragile comfort of human connections. Mindy Mejia’s third novel explores the Boundary Waters, a protected wilderness area overlapping Canada and the US; a place of wild and extreme beauty where people can and do disappear. Mejia also explores the troubled life of Maya – whose mother abandoned her as a child and who now works as a speech therapist at a psychiatric facility – and the even stranger world of Lucas, restrained in this clinic after 10 years in the forest, who needs Maya’s help to return and save his father. Sue de Groot @deGrootS1