WHERE THE UNTHINKABLE BEGINS

Thirteen true stories. Real people. Extraordinary circumstances. Questions that refuse to disappear.

A car abandoned on a snowbound mountain road. A yacht sailing away from its owner. Five divers pulled into a pipeline. A glacier revealing the remains of a hockey player fourteen years after he vanished.

In WHERE THE UNTHINKABLE BEGINS, Sebastian Karcz tells thirteen carefully researched stories of disappearance, murder, deadly accidents, and extraordinary survival. Their mysteries lie not in invented twists, but in the distance between what the evidence establishes and what remains unknown.

Inside these thirteen stories:

• Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Ted Weiher, Jackie Huett, and Gary Mathias: The Yuba County Five disappear after a basketball game in 1978. Four are later found dead in the California mountains; Gary is never found.
• John Deer: An Australian sailor falls overboard in the Caribbean and must swim for survival as his yacht, Julieta, sails away.
• Abigail Williams and Liberty German: Two teenage friends are murdered near Delphi, Indiana. Evidence from Libby's phone shapes the investigation that leads to Richard Allen's conviction.
• Grant Lockenbach and Michael Wayne Pirie: A cave descent in Georgia turns fatal when Michael attempts to reach his friend beneath a waterfall.
• Gia Fuda: An eighteen-year-old survives more than a week lost in Washington State wilderness after leaving her stranded car.
• Raymond and Jennie Kehlet: A gold-prospecting trip in Western Australia ends with Ray found dead in a mine shaft and Jennie still missing.
• Christopher Boodram, Kazim Ali Jr., Yusuf Henry, Rishi Nagassar, and Fyzal Kurban: Five commercial divers are swept into an industrial pipeline in Trinidad. Only Boodram survives.
• Stephanie Stewart: A seventy-year-old fire lookout vanishes from an isolated station in Alberta, leaving behind troubling evidence and no confirmed explanation.
• Linnea Rose Mills: A young student dies during a cold-water training dive in Montana, raising difficult questions about equipment and safety.
• Alicia Sorohan, Andrew and Diane Kerr, and Jason Sorohan: A crocodile attacks a family at a remote Australian campsite, prompting a desperate rescue.
• Daniel Robinson: A young geologist disappears in the Arizona desert; weeks later, his damaged Jeep is found without him.
• Jari Huotarinen and Jari Uusimäki: Two divers die deep inside Norway's Plura cave. Survivors Patrik Grönqvist, Kai Känkänen, and Vesa Rantanen are among the men who return to recover them.
• Duncan MacPherson: A Canadian hockey player disappears while snowboarding in Austria. His remains emerge from a glacier fourteen years later; his parents, Lynda and Bob, continue seeking answers.

Drawing on official findings, firsthand accounts, investigative records, court proceedings, and reporting, Karcz distinguishes established facts from disputed claims and unanswered questions. The result is immersive narrative nonfiction that allows the evidence to create the suspense, without losing sight of the families and survivors.

The first book in the WHERE THE UNTHINKABLE BEGINS series, with more volumes planned.

Some survived. Some never came home. Every life mattered before it became a story.