Her Name Was Missing

The dead woman had Mara Keene's name written on her wrist. She was also carrying three of Mara's business cards and a faded hospital bracelet marked BABY GIRL S. The child was officially recorded as dead in 1994. But the message hidden with the bracelet says otherwise: Tell her the baby did not die. Forensic genealogist Mara Keene is used to finding people who have disappeared inside incomplete records, altered documents, and carefully constructed family histories. She is not prepared for a murder victim who seems to have chosen Mara before her death—or for evidence that a newborn girl may have been stolen more than thirty years ago. Working alongside county investigator Jonah Reed, Mara traces the bracelet to the abandoned St. Orison Hospital. There, two baby girls were assigned the same certificate number: one declared dead, the other raised by a wealthy and powerful family. The nurse who tried to expose the truth is gone. The original records are disappearing. The surviving maternity wing is scheduled for demolition in nine days. And someone is still willing to kill to protect what happened there. As Mara follows falsified birth certificates, missing hospital files, a suspicious adoption, and a trail of women forced to live with someone else's version of the truth, the investigation becomes increasingly dangerous—and painfully personal. To find the child who vanished from the records, Mara must uncover who changed her name, who profited from the lie, and why the truth remained buried for more than three decades. Because some names are lost. Others are deliberately erased. And one was stolen. HER NAME WAS MISSING is the gripping first novel in The Missing Names Files, an atmospheric forensic-genealogy mystery featuring a brilliant female investigator, buried family secrets, an unsolved murder, and a cold case that refuses to remain dead.