The word haunting traces back to the idea of returning.

This is the second book Peters has written about Simone Strobel, a German backpacker murdered in rural Australia in 2005. The first took seven years to research and write, and three years to defend against a defamation claim. After winning the right to publish, Peters stopped writing.

Twelve years later she returns to the story — not to ask who killed Simone, but why a young woman she had never met, from the opposite side of the world, would not leave her.

As she retraces the journey to Germany, and the years spent with Simone’s family, something from her own life begins to surface. The question is no longer why Simone haunted her, but who was haunting whom.