Heather Gudenkauf

The Weight of Silence covers a single day in an Iowa town after two seven-year-old girls go missing, rotating between the parents, the sheriff and a child who has not spoken in years.

Gudenkauf worked for two decades as a teacher, much of it in special education with children who were selectively mute or had communication difficulties, and that is visible in how Calli is written.

She keeps to small midwestern towns and to crimes that grow out of families rather than out of strangers.