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Unfolding during the moody Pacific Northwest winter of 1951, we follow Bernadette Baston, scholar of child development and language acquisition, as she travels to a penitentiary on the remote island Elita in the Puget Sound to consult on a curious case: two guards have discovered an animal-like adolescent girl living alone in the cold woods beyond the prison’s walls. There are few answers, but many people who know more than they are saying. According to official reports, the girl, dubbed Atalanta, does not speak. Is her silence protecting someone? The prison warden, court-appointed guardian, and police detective embroil Bernadette in resolving a secret that the tight-knit island community has long held, and her investment in the girl’s case soon becomes more personal than professional. As a mother, wife, and woman bound by mid-twentieth-century expectations, Bernadette strategizes to retain the fragile control she has over her own freedom, identity, and future, which becomes inextricably tied to solving Atalanta’s case.

Advance Praise:

"Immensely satisfying as both a mystery and an unblinkered look at working motherhood.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"I devoured this novel, held sway by its expert construction and luminous prose, and am haunted still by the wise and impossible questions that simmer under its breathless plot and within its indelible characters. Elita belongs on a shelf among the great literary page-turners of our time.”—Melissa Febos, author of Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

"An unforgettable book that will haunt you, as it did me, long after you set it down.”—Alix Ohlin, author of We Want What We Want

"Brimming with sharp wit and tender observations, Elita strikes a superb balance between scientific scrutiny and the depth of human emotions. Lunstrum's prose surprises us with its taut, keenly observed beauty, delving into the precarity of women in a society where control works behind the facade of civility"—Kristen Millares Young, author of Subduction

"Bernadette, a child development specialist and single mother, is tasked with teaching a nonverbal teenage girl—found alone on an island that houses a prison—to speak. Everything about the girl is shrouded in mystery: her origins, even her age. As Bernadette digs deeper, the questions only multiply. Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum charts the slow-burn relationship between these two unforgettable characters with a luminous sensitivity. Elita is a brooding, atmospheric tour de force of psychological suspense."—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel