Grief cannot abide a mystery. No one understands that better than the Clarey family of Halifax.

In 1937, the Clareys are a close and loving family until their lives are transformed the night Edie, their wilful daughter and sister, vanishes, leaving no trace, no clue, as to what happened to her.

The lingering questions of her disappearance will ricochet through the succeeding generations of Clareys.

As decades pass and lives unfold, the memories of Edie’s brothers and her parents, are haunted by the spectre of the missing girl. The misery of their grief is entangled with the only comfort they can find: a belief that one day the mystery of Edie’s disappearance will be solved.

Drawn into Edie’s young life, and into her story, are two young men who work at her father’s business: the bookkeeper Raymond Gillis and a stranger named Micah Gessen. The three form a triangle of jealousy and obsession. One of them knows what happened to the Clarey girl.

Just as Edie’s vanishing is a moment of transformation for the Clarey family, so are the times they live in. The story of The Spanish Boy is told against the backdrop of some of the momentous events of the twentieth and earliest part of the twenty-first centuries.

Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, C.S. Reardon worked in Toronto for three decades, where she was an award-winning television producer for CBC-TV on programs such as The Journal, Canada: A People’s History, and the fifth estate. In 2010, Reardon returned to live in Halifax to work on her own writing.

C.S. Reardon's profile page