On demolition morning at the derelict Bristol Zoo, architect Arania Webb returns to the place where she grew up, daughter of the zoo's brilliant geneticist who vanished a decade ago.
Behind a cracked wall beneath his old lab lies a hidden room that is not on any plan, and what her father buried there will change everything she believes about her own life.
What would you destroy to protect a secret?
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The research behind the book
Bristol Zoo Gardens, Clifton
Opened in 1836, Bristol Zoo was the world's oldest provincial zoo. After 185 years it closed its Clifton site in September 2022, and the story is set on the morning its Victorian buildings come down.
Homes on the old zoo site
In April 2023 the BBC reported the former zoo site would be redeveloped for housing. Jo read that headline and asked: what might lie beneath the foundations?
Orb weaver spiders
Patient architects and precise predators, orb weavers build some of nature's most beautiful structures, then wrap their prey in silk.
Conservation genetics and chimeras
Real zoos employ conservation geneticists to manage breeding programs. The story pushes that science past its ethical boundary.
The Congo Basin's undiscovered species
Grafton Webb vanished hunting an incredibly rare arachnid in one of Earth's least-explored rainforests, where new species are still described every year.
