‘The Garden of Lost Girls’ is out now! Here’s where it came from

by Allison Tait | Sep 1, 2026 | Blog, Books, My books, Writing

It’s publication day for my new middle-grade cold-case crime thriller THE GARDEN OF LOST GIRLS, which is, as always, creates an exquisite emotional blend of excitement and anxiety.

The response to DANGER ROAD has been so incredible that the idea of writing another gritty tween mystery was both amazing fun and an overwhelming challenge.

But 18-year-old Jessica Martin, who disappeared thirty years ago from the opening night of her own play, provided the (fictional) catalyst and her 14-year old nephew Sam and his cousins Gracie and Archie became an engaging and persistent group of teenage sleuths.

So where did they all come from?

The starting point for The Garden of Lost Girls

As always, the foundation of the story bubbled up out of headlines and preoccupations. It actually began with an old house – longtime blog readers and podcast listeners will recognise the old weatherboard house (known as The Old Girl) that we lived in until a few years ago – and a title: The Garden of Lost Girls, inspired by the magical garden out the back.

It’s unusual for me to have a title before I write the story – usually it comes out of the text and is often the last thing that goes on the manuscript – and that is perhaps why it took me a long time to find the right story to go with it…

When we moved out of this house, I knew that it would feature in a story one day, because its big rooms with their fireplaces and their dark floorboards felt ready-made for an historical novel. Plus, I knew that I wanted to capture it on the page and keep it with me always.

I started and discarded several ideas, character notes and snippets over the years, and when I came up with the title ‘The Garden of Lost Girls’, I wrapped the whole lot up into a word document on my computer – where it sat for several years while I wrote ‘Willow Bright’s Secret Plot‘ and then ‘Danger Road‘.

But when the time came for me to think about writing a second middle-grade cold-case crime novel, I opened up that file because this house and that title felt ready-made for this genre. So I tossed out all of those character notes, and most of the history, and started again with a whole new idea…

Finding the new story

Now that I knew I was writing a middle-grade cold-case crime thriller, I needed a whole new world and a whole new protagonist. Cold cases require a contemporary character to be the sleuth – someone invested enough to keep going even when things get tough (and dangerous) – and an historical character that we get to know as the story unfolds.

Given I already had such an evocative title in place – The Garden of Lost Girls – I knew that somewhere in this mix I had a missing girl, a garden, and a story that would need to be told realistically, and carefully, for a middle-grade audience.

Enter Jessica Martin, 18 years old, and missing for thirty years.

All I knew about Jessica when I first met her – and it really does feel like ‘meeting’ characters rather than ‘creating’ them – was that she had written a play called ‘The Garden of Lost Girls’ for her final year 12 exams.

I also knew that, minutes before the curtain rose on the opening night production of that play, Jessica turned towards a group of people entering the theatre, gasped, and walked out the side door of the theatre, leaving her family sitting in their seats.

She was never seen again.

When I thought about who would be motivated to find out exactly what happened to Jessica that night – why she left, where she went, and why she never came home – I landed on her 14-year-old nephew Sam, who has never met his Aunt Jessica, but feels as though he knows her because, in her absence, she somehow takes up more space in his life than he feels she would if she was living around the corner, like his other aunt Kat.

So this is the story of the second generation of a family residing in that liminal space left after a family member goes missing. The space of ‘not knowing’. And I was fortunate to be able to interview Dr Sarah Wayland, Professor of Social Work and missing persons expert, before I began writing.

Dr Wayland is the author of ‘Living In The Liminal Space‘, based on her research into unresolved and ambiguous loss, and her insights gave me the courage to explore Sam’s story and write it for a middle-grade audience.

Building the world of ‘The Garden of Lost Girls’

Of course, a novel is never about just one thing, and to build the world of Clifton Heads, the small coastal town in which the story is set, I drew on the landscapes of the south coast of NSW (this time Kiama) and then moved them around at will, putting a big park at the top of the headland, and an amateur theatre right near the beach.

I created Long Beach, where Sam loves to surf and where his family used to live, and I created Flat Rock, at the bottom of the cliffs that drop down from the headland. But I drew on the surf culture that permeates so much of life in the towns that dot the coast near me, and I drew on my own memories of participating in amateur plays as a teenager myself (that’s me, aged about 11, as Alice In Wonderland in the photo above).

Sam is a surfer, not a Theatre Kid, and he is horrified when his Mum asks him to be in the 30th anniversary production of The Garden Of Lost Girls. But when she tells him that they’re hoping the production will jog someone’s memory enough that they finally find out what happened to Jessica, he agrees for two reasons – one, he really wants to help his Mum find out where her sister went all those years ago, and two, his cousins Gracie and Archie are already on board for the play for the same reason.

But all three cousins soon admit to having misgivings.

Because while they don’t know where Jessica is, the family still has hope she’ll come home. What happens when they discover the truth?

And then there’s the fact that someone really doesn’t want the play to go ahead at all…

As I said at the start of this post, writing this story was both amazingly fun and an incredible challenge.

I hope you’ll have a read and let me know what you think!

Buy your copy of ‘The Garden Of Lost Girls’ here. 

Are you new here? Welcome to my blog!

I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of 13 middle-grade novels, including adventure fantasy series such as The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries, and contemporary stories including THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE, WILLOW BRIGHT’S SECRET PLOT, DANGER ROAD and THE LAST WORD.

You can find out more about me here, and more about my books here.

If you’re looking for book recommendations for young readers, join the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community, tune in to the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast and sign up for the Your Kid’s Next Read newsletter.