The Missing Sister

The seventh installment in the Seven Sisters series, the novel interweaves a present-day search across multiple continents with a historical narrative set during Ireland's War of Independence. Six adopted sisters race to identify the missing seventh member of their family before gathering aboard the yacht Titan, while the woman they seek confronts the buried traumas of her own past.

The story opens in New Zealand's Gibbston Valley, where 22-year-old Mary-Kate McDougal is grieving her father Jock's recent death. Her mother Merry is traveling abroad, and her brother Jack is studying winemaking in France. At Atlantis, the D'Aplièse estate on Lake Geneva, sisters Maia and Ally learn from their father's lawyer, Georg Hoffman, that he may have located Merope, the missing seventh sister their adoptive father, Pa Salt, spent years searching for. The proof is a drawing of a distinctive star-shaped emerald ring with seven points. Since the lead points to a Mary McDougal in New Zealand, the sisters send CeCe, who is nearby in Australia with her partner Chrissie, to investigate.

CeCe and Chrissie visit The Vinery, the family vineyard, where Mary-Kate recognizes the ring from the drawing. It belonged to her mother Merry, who gave it to Mary-Kate on her 21st birthday but borrowed it back for her trip. Mary-Kate also reveals she was adopted, which aligns with the sisters' own histories. Since Merry has the ring, the sisters begin pursuing her across multiple countries. Electra, the sixth sister and a famous supermodel, flies to Toronto, where she overhears Merry on the phone sounding frightened and wondering whether "him" has found her. Merry escapes before Electra can approach her, but Electra learns Merry is heading to Claridge's Hotel in London.

Star, the third sister, and her almost-brother-in-law Orlando, an eccentric antiquarian bookseller, devise a ruse at Claridge's. Orlando poses as a wine journalist and invites Merry to drinks in Star's suite. When Star comments on the ring's design and Orlando mentions the myth of the missing seventh sister in the Pleiades, a star cluster also known as the Seven Sisters, Merry bolts. Star confirms the ring matches the drawing.

Ally travels to Provence to meet Jack at the vineyard where he is studying. Over dinners together, they bond over shared experiences of grief and family. Jack mentions that his mother sounded frightened during a recent call from Dublin, and Ally passes this information to her sisters.

The narrative shifts to Merry's perspective, revealing the source of her terror. Growing up in West Cork, Merry befriended Bobby Noiro, a troubled classmate obsessed with Irish republicanism. Bobby became fixated on Merry and, years later at Trinity College Dublin, held a gun to her throat, threatening to kill her, her family, and her Protestant boyfriend Peter through supposed Irish Republican Army (IRA) connections. This threat drove Merry to flee Ireland entirely.

As a child, Bobby had given Merry a diary written by his grandmother Nuala Murphy, calling Merry "the missing sister." Merry finally reads the diary, which recounts Nuala's life during the Irish War of Independence. Nuala was a member of Cumann na mBan, the women's volunteer organization supporting the IRA. She nursed a British officer injured in World War I at Argideen House, the local Protestant estate, while secretly passing intelligence to the IRA. She married Finn Casey, a schoolteacher and IRA volunteer, but the Irish Civil War of 1922 destroyed their happiness. Finn was killed shortly after the ambush at Béal na Bláth that took Michael Collins's life. Nuala's sister Hannah, a Treaty supporter, refused to attend Finn's funeral, and the sisters never reconciled. Years later, Nuala's daughter Maggie and Hannah's son John fell in love and married despite both mothers' opposition.

In Dublin, Merry reunites with Ambrose Lister, her elderly godfather and a retired Classics professor at Trinity College Dublin. Ambrose reveals that Merry was not born into the O'Reilly family. In November 1949, she was found as a newborn in a basket on the doorstep of Father O'Brien, the local priest, accompanied by the emerald ring. Ambrose and Father O'Brien arranged for Maggie O'Reilly, whose own baby had just died, to adopt the foundling, with Ambrose funding her care. Merry was never told. She is devastated but ultimately accepts that love, not genetics, defines her family.

Tiggy, the fifth D'Aplièse sister, flies to Dublin and meets Merry face to face. Her gentle manner dissolves Merry's suspicions about the sisters' motives. Tiggy shows Merry the ring drawing, and Merry confirms it is identical. Tiggy declares they have found the missing sister.

Mary-Kate arrives from New Zealand and reveals she has contacted her biological mother through an adoption agency: a New Zealand surgeon named Michelle MacNeish who was 17 when she gave Mary-Kate up. This makes it unlikely that Mary-Kate is the missing sister, since her birth parents have no connection to Pa Salt. The focus shifts to Merry herself.

Merry, Jack, and Mary-Kate travel to West Cork, where Merry reunites with her family for the first time in 37 years. Her sister Katie reveals that Merry's parents, Maggie and John, were first cousins whose mothers, Nuala and Hannah, were the estranged sisters. The family feud born of the Civil War shaped the household Merry grew up in without her ever knowing why.

Merry visits Helen Noiro, Bobby's younger sister, and discovers the truth that frees her. Bobby was arrested in 1972 for arson and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He has been institutionalized since 1978. His claims of IRA membership were delusions; the real Provisional IRA denied knowing him. The gun he held to Merry's throat was a 90-year-old relic, likely never loaded. The man who haunted her for decades was never the dangerous figure she believed him to be.

Merry also confronts an unresolved strand of her past. Ambrose locates Peter, the boyfriend Bobby's threats forced Merry to abandon. They meet in Belfast, where Peter reveals that Bobby threatened him too and that he wrote letters to Merry at her London address, but mistakenly addressed them to "Cromwell Gardens" instead of "Cromwell Crescent." Every letter was returned. Their separation was caused by a single misheard word. They part warmly, exchanging contact details.

At Atlantis, Maia discovers coordinates engraved on an armillary sphere, a celestial globe, in Pa Salt's garden. They point to Argideen House in West Cork, near where Merry was found as a baby. Jack learns from his aunt that Argideen House was purchased in the 1940s by a family named Eszu, a name Ally recognizes: Kreeg Eszu's yacht was spotted near Pa Salt's burial site, and Kreeg's son Zed fathered Maia's child years earlier.

Georg Hoffman arrives at Ambrose's flat in Dublin, visibly moved by Merry's resemblance to someone he knew. He shows her a charcoal portrait that looks exactly like Merry but depicts, he says, her mother. He gives Merry a leather journal and a letter signed "Atlas." The letter reveals that Merry's mother was the love of Atlas's life, that he spent decades searching for them both, and that the journal contains his full story for Merry to share with the sisters.

Ambrose urges Merry to board the private jet Georg has arranged and join the sisters in Greece. She agrees. On the Titan, the D'Aplièse sisters gather with their partners and children. Georg confirms to Ally that Merry, not Mary-Kate, is the missing sister, and that the confusion arose because there were two Mary McDougals. The novel closes with Merry preparing to read the journal that will reveal her father's story.