School may be back in session, but there’s still a month of summer left — plenty of time for one last road trip before fall arrives. And nothing makes the miles pass more quickly than a good audiobook.
“The Girl in the Maze” (Paradise Press, $4.99 introductory price) by Georgia native R.K. Jackson is a juicy, twisty literary thriller so captivating you might want to take the long way to your destination. A USA Today bestseller published as an e-book by Penguin Random House in 2015, the audiobook release marks the 10th anniversary of the book’s debut.
Set on the Georgia coast, this fast-paced mystery combines elements of Geechee culture, clairvoyance, juju spells, mental illness, nefarious developers and environmental activism.
Martha Covington is a college student with schizophrenia who has recently recovered from a psychotic break. With the aid of her psychiatrist Vince and a daily dose of meds, she has embarked on a new beginning in the small town of Amberleen (think Beaufort, South Carolina). She’s landed an internship there with the local historical society. Her job is to record and transcribe oral histories from the direct descendants of enslaved West Africans known as Geechee who live on Shell Heap Island (think Sapelo Island).
Although Martha is on the mend, she still hears things she can’t explain — like the voice of Lenny, who pipes up whenever she feels anxious and fills her head with negative thoughts. And she sees things, too. Sometimes they turn out to be nothing, like the late-night vision of a dead body hanging from a tree that‘s actually a broken limb. But other times they turn out to be something, like the mummified finger she finds the house cat batting around her rooming house floor.
Credit: R.K. Jackson
Credit: R.K. Jackson
On her first trip to Shell Heap Island, Martha meets Lady Albertha, a Geechee soothsayer. She tells Martha that she, too, has the gift of communicating with spirits and suggests that the medication she takes impedes her ability to receive their messages.
Meanwhile, there’s tension brewing in this idyllic corner of coastal Georgia. A shadowy group of Amberleen developers are angling to have the County Commission condemn land on Shell Heap Island so they can force the Geechee to sell it to them for the development of Tidewater, a golf course community of luxury homes.
Martha’s benevolent boss Lydia Dussault, part of Amberleen’s wealthy old guard, is vehemently opposed, as are a group of young Black activists, who have been falsely portrayed as drug-dealing gang members by the pro-development contingent.
When a shocking murder occurs, Martha becomes the No. 1 suspect and she goes into hiding, forgoing access to the medicine that keeps the visions and intrusive voices at bay. Joining forces with an unlikely cohort, she sets out to find the real killer while trying to determine whether what she sees and hears is real and what, if anything, spirits from beyond the mortal plane might be trying to tell her.
A gripping plot and beguiling characters aside, one of the elements that make this audiobook so delightful is the narration by Hillary Huber, named a 2025 Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine. Her mastery of accents from the melodious Geechee dialect to the broad vowel drawl of Southern aristocracy is on point and music to this Southerner’s ears.
“The Girl in the Maze” is available through Spotify, Apple Books and other outlets.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.
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