Kala

Fifteen-year-old Kala Lannan disappeared from the tourist town of Kinlough in November 2003. No trace was ever found - until now, when her remains are discovered at a local building site. The day after the grisly discovery, Helen Laughlin, Kala's best friend and confidante, reluctantly returns to the town she ran from ten years before.
Helen falls in with two other members of their teenage gang - Mush, scarred and scared to leave the safety of his ma's café on the high street, and the Famous Joe Brennan, Kala's boyfriend, a commercially successful but emotionally conflicted musician newly returned in an effort to dry out and reconnect with something authentic in life. Their actions over the following days are propelled by the need to understand what happened to the girl who meant so much to each of them and whose disappearance upended their lives. But to find answers, they have to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala's disappearance. Ultimately, they must do what others should have done before them to stop the violent patterns of their town's past repeating themselves once again...

Colin Walsh's short stories have won several awards including the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and the Hennessy Literary Award. In 2019 he was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year. His writing has been published in the Stinging Fly, the Irish Times and broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. KALA is his first novel. He is from Galway and lives in Belgium.