We Were Never There: A Family Reckoning in August

By Prashant Mishra

Neil Dutta has built a careful life as a public defender in a border town in Punjab, avoiding the questions that ended an old friendship. At 27, that restraint collapses when Neil spots a childhood photograph in a stranger’s missing-person appeal. The return of a colleague who may be protecting the culprit makes the search both intimate and unreliable. Their evidence suggests that a supposedly spontaneous romance was designed as a marketing campaign. Then the online mob turns on the protagonist. To protect the wrongfully accused, Neil may have to trust the person whose lie began the investigation. The clue hidden in a child’s map of places adults deny exist proves that the protagonist’s first assumption protected the real culprit. Away from the main investigation, the need to prepare a legal-aid petition, while the collaborator may be feeding information to the opposition.