The Girl Before

May 2, 2016
The FBI agents raiding Clara Lawson’s rural homestead in the shadow of the Rockies shatter not only the door but almost every aspect of life as the 23-year-old knows it in therapist Olsen’s suspenseful but disturbing debut about a human trafficking operation. Initially, the only reality Clara can remember is with forbidding Papa G, stern Mama Mae, and their son, Glen. She’s one of an endless stream of girls to be trained for supposedly bright futures with wealthy “clients.” But as her confinement in a psychiatric facility continues, with FBI interrogation, individual therapy sessions, and, eventually, participation in a support group, Clara starts to face some of the darker aspects of her past—and the gut-wrenching choices that will define her future. Olsen does her best to make Clara sympathetic, but Clara’s rosy naïveté about the horrific reality of her situation can be difficult to take. Readers will struggle to relate to a character who may be at once a victim and a victimizer. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel & Goderich.

June 1, 2016
What at first feels like a tale of suspense turns into a thoughtful look at victims and perpetrators and the difficulties that arise for someone who is both at once.When Clara Lawson and a little girl named Daisy are pulled from their hiding place during a home invasion, she's separated from the girl and her husband, Glen, who yells "Say nothing" to her as he's wrestled away. But what seems like a kidnapping is quickly revealed to be far more complex. "Daisy has only been with us a few months," Clara says on the second page, establishing an air of strangeness. "Daisy isn't her real name. I don't know what her real name is." Olsen writes in chapters alternating between "Now," with Clara in custody, being pressured for information by agents, and a variable "Then" that gradually reveals a story of human trafficking. Clara was picked up as a young girl and is now something like a headmistress to the family business and its new acquisitions. Clara struggles to reconcile the life she's come to know with the reality that, despite her good intentions, she has done irreparable harm to uncountable girls, and she's shaken to learn that her family has never stopped looking for her. Counseling sessions help her pick apart these layers, and her pregnancy gives her a reason to move forward. Flashbacks to Glen's early courtship are of a typical, even old-fashioned romance. But his defiance of Mama and Papa G., his parents and the cruel owners of the business, is not without consequences; their interference in the couple's affairs provides some of the more frightening scenes here, and the son quickly grows to fill his father's monstrous shoes. It moves at the pace of a mystery, but the novel is strongest when it allows Clara to unpack her past and consider who she will be going forward. A moving story of recovery and responsibility.

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Starred review from August 1, 2016
Clara Lawson is in her kitchen brushing her daughter's hair when armed men dressed in black break in and take her family. The last words Clara hears from her beloved husband, Glenn, are, Say nothing. In the gripping opening of this novel of psychological suspense, which explores the line between victim and victimizer, it quickly becomes clear that what seems a violent home invasion is something else entirely. Clara's first-person account toggles between past and present, going back as far as 17 years to explain how she came to her present situation as the 23-year-old helpmate of her husband in his unspeakable family business. In the past, she recalls a rigid, sometimes cruel upbringing by adoptive parents who perpetuate dreadful activities and are not pleased when she falls in love with their only son, a love he reciprocates and that upsets family plans. In the present, she ignores or deflects repeated requests for information, refuses to eat for days, and is briefly imprisoned to get a taste of what might await heruntil gradually she faces the truth, acknowledges guilt and responsibility, and looks toward the future. A powerful, moving debut by therapist Olsen in which cruelty is counterbalanced by compassion and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)