MARTHA’S TIDE

Martha wants to expose George’s betrayal and reclaim her dignity and future, rather than be a victim.

This book is about the space between what we present to the world and what we actually are. It is about the ordinary suburban dream – the house, the partnership, the promise of stability – and the rot that can fester beneath it. It asks what a person might do when they discover that the life they’ve built has been constructed on lies, and whether the pursuit of justice can ever be clean, or whether it simply exchanges one form of darkness for another.

The characters in these pages are not heroes or villains in any simple sense. They are people caught in the grip of their own desires and resentments, each convinced of their own righteousness and willing to deceive and manipulate to get what they believe they deserve. Betrayal, as you will see, is rarely one-directional. It compounds and echoes. It creates new betrayals in its wake.

What follows is an examination of obsession and possession, of the gaslighting that can occur in the most intimate relationships, and of what it means to question your sanity when the person you trusted most has made you doubt everything. It is a story about a woman who disappears – and about what happens when the truth of her disappearance is far more complicated than anyone imagined.