A well-to-do British family struggles to remain whole in the wake of an inexplicable tragedy in author Linda Madsen's powerful and poignant novel, Circling Senta. In the bestselling vein of Jodi Picoult, Anna Quindlen, and Elizabeth Berg, Madsen tells the story of Steenekens of London from the point of view of mother Vita. An accomplished jewelry designer, Vita is trying to cope with her husband's suspected infidelity, her teenage son's spiraling drug problem, and, most importantly, the recent murder of her emotionally detached scientist daughter. At twenty-two, Senta Steeneken was beautiful and brilliant, though plagued with Asperger syndrome, and the questions surrounding her death in a bad part of the city are troubling and perplexing in equal measure. From the seclusion of her sister's Norfolk farmhouse, Vita resolves to search for answers in her own past that will somehow ease her distress and quite possibly save what remains of her family in the process. A masterful work of fiction that provocatively addresses issues of class and race, familial love and sibling rivalry, Linda Madsen's Circling Senta is at once heartbreaking and heart-lifting, a novel of intelligence and true emotion that will remain with the reader far beyond its final paragraph.