Book of the month: April

It is every parent’s nightmare – the abduction of a child.

When dreamy, sensitive Carmel goes missing it sends her mother Beth’s life into a tailspin. Freshly separated from Carmel’s father, and raw with all the emotional upheaval that entailed, Beth’s days become desperate, see-sawing between hope, guilt and recrimination.

As Beth frantically searches for her daughter, Carmel is attempting to make sense of the new world she finds herself in.

Taken by a lay preacher, who believes she has special gifts, Carmel finds herself living in a mobile home, and attending revival missions far away from everything that is familiar.

Told in two very different voices, this debut is moving, tender and tense, exploring love and loss from the perspectives of the adult Beth and her otherworldly child in a way that’s devastatingly convincing.

The Girl In The Red Coat by Kate Hamer is published by Faber & Faber, £12.99