“Wish You Were Here is at once a riveting mystery, an astute analysis of sexual violence, an investigation of a police force and a study in grief and loss. On all levels it succeeds brilliantly. An engrossing, heartbreaking and necessary book.”
Don Gillmour, author of The River, winner of the 2019 Governor-Generals Award
“In her extraordinary collaboration with John Allore that fuses the personal and the professional, journalist Patricia Pearson investigates with passionate rigour a 40-year cold case of a disappeared teenaged girl, opening a Pandora’s Box of deceit, pain, and police malfeasance, a shadow world where ‘every truth is suddenly suspect.’
Unfolding as a finely-detailed mystery, the story gradually leads us into a deeper pool of reflection on the alchemy of trauma, loss and memory, and its rippling, lifelong effects. A shared labour of love, we taste the elusive vapour of ‘proof’ and ‘closure’, the spiritual dangers of gazing too long into the abyss.”
James FitzGerald, author of What Disturbs Our Blood, winner of the 2010 Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize
“Wish You Were Here is an investigation intimate and mournful in nature, yet heroic in its level of forensic detail. By bearing witness to how a malefactor slips through the cracks of a haphazard, morally bankrupt system, infected by misogyny and cronyism—and how the legacy of that injustice connects to further calamity—the brave authors take back some of what is lost, bringing some measure of justice to an unending spiral of tragedy.”
Robert Kolker, author of Lost Girls and Hidden Valley Road
“Wish You Were Here opens a window into an era where rape was a victim’s fault, police hardly bothered to investigate, and murders and assaults were routinely shuffled under the rug.. Infuriating, gripping and devastating, Wish You Were Here is also a heartfelt memorial to Theresa, and a testament to her family, who have never stopped seeking justice for her and many others who were stolen.”
Jessica McDiarmid, author of Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice