Julie Golston

When the dead leave messages, someone must listen.

She was never supposed to be a witness. She was designed to be the proof.

FBI Agent Sarah Holt has investigated homicides for twenty years...

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FBI Agent Sarah Holt has investigated homicides for twenty years. She knows how to read crime scenes, predict patterns, follow evidence. But nothing prepared her for the body discovered at dawn in Death Valley—a young woman carved with intricate spirals, positioned with mathematical precision, and left with a single Polaroid photograph.

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The photo, dated 1981, shows another victim. Same spirals. Same precision. Same killer—forty years later.

The investigation leads Sarah from the Mojave Desert to the glacial coasts of Alaska, where she uncovers a conspiracy spanning generations. Indigenous women have been disappearing for decades—systematic erasure tied to land acquisitions, government programs, and a family legacy built on violence.

At the center of it all is Hope, a traumatized child who speaks with the voices of 237 murdered women. She knows things no child should know. She remembers deaths she never witnessed. And she carries evidence that could expose a network four decades in the making.

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But some patterns span lifetimes. Some documentation can't be destroyed. And some truths demand to be witnessed—no matter the cost.

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THE DOCUMENTATION is a searing psychological thriller that confronts the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis through an FBI investigation that becomes impossible to walk away from.

For readers of True Detective Season 1, Scandinavian noir, and thrillers where every victim matters.

 

Content Warning: This novel addresses violence against women, child trauma, and institutional corruption with psychological realism and unflinching honesty.