Told in alternating chapters that go back and forth between the 1990s and the present, Unravelling uncovers a story of corruption that connects the two small-town British Columbia protagonists whose worlds are irreparably damaged. Ruthless octogenarian Vivian Lennox fights her deteriorating mind as she defends the catastrophic decisions she made decades earlier. Armed only with her curiosity, 10-year-old Elena Reid is dangerously unaware of who or what she is about to expose as she searches for answers to her father’s disappearance, following an explosion at the sawmill. The parallel stories come to a head with the arrival of a newcomer who is determined to find out exactly what happened to the town more than 20 years earlier, and how deeply Vivian herself was involved.