A young girl"s disappearance rocks a community and a family, in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice and the atrocities of war, from literary legend Joyce Carol Oates. Cressida Mayfield has gone missing. The desperate search yields but one clue; she was last seen in the company of Corporal Brett Kincaid, Iraq veteran - and the ex-fiance of Cressida"s sister. As the deeply traumatized Kincaid struggles to mount a defence, he finds his memories of that terrible night are tangled with those of the most appalling wartime savagery. Dark and riveting, the nerve-shredding Carthage unravels the devastating consequences of violence on two young lives, while probing the very limits of our capacity for forgiveness.