Ruth Sterling has always kept the details of her past from her daughter Catherine.  When Catherine starts digging into that past in light of her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, what she finds stuns her: her mother has been lying about everything, including her disease.  The more Catherine digs, the closer she comes to the painful truth, one Ruth has been hiding from and preparing for, for the past two decades.

Gone Tonight is my first solo experience with Sarah Pekkanen, who I have previously only read in her team-ups with Greer Hendricks.  In this outing, she switches chapters back and forth between Ruth and Catherine’s point of view, giving the reader insights from each character that the other doesn’t share.  It is an interesting set-up for what, ultimately, is a familiar tale, of a woman and her child hiding from a mysterious past.  I shall be looking out for more of Pekkanen’s work, either on her own or in collaboration with others.