the Social Worker: Some children tell truth without words.

Nine years ago, eleven year old Emily Ward disappeared.Caleb Ross has never stopped wondering whether he helped put her in danger.For fourteen years, Caleb has worked in child protection, making impossible decisions for children caught between violent homes, exhausted parents and a system that never seems to have enough places for everyone who needs one.Then seventeen year old Riley Grant tells him something she should not know.There are houses.Unofficial places where frightened children can disappear for a night, find food, sleep somewhere safe and leave without questions.Children know about them.Most adults do not.And according to a story passed between vulnerable kids for nearly a decade, Emily Ward stayed at one of those houses on the night she vanished.Someone came to collect her.Someone driving a county vehicle.As Caleb begins pulling at a thread he has spent nine years trying to forget, the investigation reaches into the very system he has devoted his life to serving. Old records no longer fit. People he trusts know more than they once admitted. And stories dismissed as the confused memories of damaged children begin sounding frighteningly consistent.The deeper Caleb goes, the harder one question becomes to avoid.What if the children had been telling the truth all along?The Social Worker is an emotional crime thriller about missing children, loyalty, guilt and the terrible consequences of deciding whose voice deserves to be believed.Some children tell the truth without words.