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Eye Contact
by Cammie McGovern
Viking, June 2006
ISBN: 0670037656

As children wage mock battles in the playground of Woodside Elementary School two students, a little girl and boy, seem to vanish, last seen heading across the soccer field towards the woods behind the school. Hours pass and then only one of them, Adam, a nine-year-old boy with autism, is found a live, the sole witness to an incomprehensible killing. Barely verbal on the best of days, Adam has retreated into a world that Cara, his mother, knows only too well.   With her community in shock and her son unable to help with the police investigation, Cara tries to decode the puzzling events.

When another child goes missing, Cara realizes that only she can unlock her son's silence and interpret the changes in her son's behavior, not only to help him through the trauma, but also to help the police catch a killer.   And as she moves closer to exposing the truth, her unsettling past begins to emerge from the shadows.   In her desperate desire to protect her child from real life, has she made his world a more dangerous place?

A thrilling novel of psychological suspense and a gripping tale of a crime that strikes at the heart of a small community, Cammie McGovern's heartrending novel is, above all, the powerful story of the tender and complex bond between a mother and her young son.

"Once in a blue moon comes a literary thriller so full of our everyday lives that it rocks you back on your heels. This is it! This book. These sweet, funny, heartbreaking characters-these mothers and sons, broken friends and lovers-including one unforgettable little boy whose last gesture in those deadly, mysterious woods recalls our lost innocence. EYE CONTACT is a thrilling mystery tautly told, and beautifully realized. In it, Cammie McGovern leads us through the shadowlands of our own hometowns where words break down and paranoias proliferate, even as we yearn for one lost moment of fluency. This is a book of secrets that will change you."
-- Michael Paterniti,   New York Times bestselling author of Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain