I’d been hearing what a remarkable writer Cynthia Pelayo is from folks whose opinion I implicitly trust, so when the opportunity arose to read an ARC of her newest, forthcoming novel, Forgotten Sisters, I jumped at the chance. I’m so glad I did.

Set in modern day Chicago, Forgotten Sisters expertly weaves together several story threads. The first is an exquisitely written meditation on grief, loss, and familial attachments concerning two sisters, Anna and Jennie. They live in the home they grew up in, the home of their grandmother and parents before them, a historic bungalow on the banks of the Chicago River. The house is a character in its own right, possibly haunted, and the sisters move through its rooms like ghosts themselves, consumed by tragedy, trapped within its walls. When Anna meets a young man, she receives a glimmer of hope that perhaps, just perhaps, there’s a life to be had away from her sister.

Otherwise, Anna’s only tie to the outside world is a podcast she hosts on the violent, tragic past that envelopes Chicago like a shroud. From the sordid, bloody history of the Chicago Stockyards, to the horrific catastrophe of the SS Eastland ship capsizing, Pelayo masterfully tells the story of a city steeped in death and disaster. Anna’s current fascination is with the alarming number of young, single men who are disappearing, only to wash up, drowned, in the many waterways the surround and course through the city. The family of Anna and Jennie has been intimately intertwined with those waterways, and the drowned men hit close to home.

Finally, Pelayo introduces us to two police detectives investigating those same drownings. With a storytelling style at once elegantly gothic, drenched in the supernatural, yet solidly grounded in historical accuracy, Pelayo weaves these threads together like a virtuoso, drawing the reader into her world. Forgotten Sisters is a gorgeously realized work of fiction.

Mark your calendars: Forgotten Sisters will be released on March 19, 2024, and is available for pre-order now.