You think you can spot the sketchy characters from afar, so you pull your kids closer. Grow up in New York and you know there are bad guys, and where some of the bodies are buried. … Every community has its own pitfalls and dark secrets.' Perceptions of one's self as a small-towner can be unrealistic as well, she points out: 'There are a lot of secrets in small towns. And it's not just outsiders who harbor those stereotypes. The book's plotline culminates in a finish you never saw coming because its characters seemed like such - well - straightforward, predictable Iowans. 'I believe it's drawn right in the middle of us.' 'We often believe the line between good and evil is drawn on the outskirts of our towns,' said the 44-year-old Sioux Center native and resident in an interview this week. Baart, 44, of Sioux Center, has a way of finding the dark underside of small-town Iowa life and mining it. This is a fine read, filled with suspense but also with other compelling kinds of tension, relationships and richly etched scenes.Īnd then there's this other lure, if you're an Iowan.

It's so emotionally rich in relationships and conflicts and compelling characters that you wonder how it can simultaneously carry so much suspense. But it is such a riveting page-turner that I wondered why I'd never heard of this talented Iowa writer before.

It's also classified in a genre I don't read much of: thriller. Since it's the first book of Baart's I've read, I can't judge. More: Rekha Basu: Do the John Deere strike and others signal hope for workers' rights post-COVID? 2, it is Baart's 10th novel and, according to the editor of her publishing company, Atria Books (a division of Simon and Schuster), her hands-down best. The story grips you from the start and doesn't let go as it glides seamlessly between present and past, first person and third, from things we may suspect now that were only foreshadowed then. Bitter and unforgiving as deep February, when frost edged the windows like salt on the rim of a glass.' 'The murders took place on a hot summer night, but to Juniper it would always be winter in Jericho. That is where Iowa author Nicole Baart's novel, 'Everything we Didn't Say,' begins. And she left a real-life love story in the making. She left a brother who was the prime suspect in a pair of unsolved murders of a neighboring farm couple. She left a newborn daughter for her mother and stepfather to raise. But when Juniper went away, she swore never to come back. She is there now ostensibly to help a dear librarian friend, suffering from a terminal illness. Juniper Baker returns to her hometown of Jericho, Iowa, 15 years after leaving, which was the summer after she graduated from high school.

Things we say in the dark