Hide and Seek

The artist Valentine Blyth has a generous heart. He cares for his invalid wife, rescues a deaf orphan girl from a traveling circus, and takes her into his home. But his kindness conceals a fear: he knows nothing of Madonna's true origins, only that her blood relations might one day claim her. So he keeps what little he knows locked away, building a fragile family on a foundation of secrets. When Madonna falls in love with Zack, the young man Valentine mentors, the stakes only grow. Zack's troubles with his tyrannical father spiral outward when he befriends a mysterious stranger who has just returned from years of rough living in the American wilderness. From that moment, the plot thickens. A hidden identity. A secret past. And the terrible possibility that everything Valentine has built could be torn apart. This is Wilkie Collins before his masterpieces, already displaying the psychological complexity and narrative cunning that would define sensation fiction. A story about what we hide from those we love, and what happens when the truth finds us anyway.