
Reef Road is a taut psychological thriller told in two entwined voices. Linda Alonso is a Palm Beach mother trapped in an unraveling marriage during the early pandemic. The other narrator, a writer who grew up in the shadow of her mother’s best friend’s unsolved 1948 murder in Pittsburgh, has spent a lifetime chasing answers. When a severed hand appears on Reef Road beach, the writer’s obsession and Linda’s desperation intersect. Across short, propulsive chapters, the story moves between present-day Florida and a decades-old crime, between a marriage that turns violent and the ways trauma keeps rippling across generations. The result is a raw, intimate portrait of how one horrific act can echo for decades and how choices made in fear can destroy a family—or save what’s left of it.