When tween girls vanish in sync with a collectible doll series, a distraught mother and tormented FBI Agent race to locate the doll house before the Doll Keeper abducts the final victim, sealing their fate.

SYNOPSIS:

The Doll Keeper is cinema meets social urgency. Several years ago, my work commute took ninety minutes each way for several months. During that time, there were four Amber Alerts for girls of similar age and size, different ethnicities. I have daughters. If someone abducted one of them…the thought crushed me.

This prompted me to write a short story for a Horror Writers Association anthology that made the short list with over 10,000 entries for one slot. Since then, I spoke with the FBI and Human Trafficking Agents and learned how impossible their task. In the past five years, the number of missing children increased 40%. In 2024, there were over 460,000 reported cases, with over 1,300 abducted to be kept or to be killed. Few are noted in the news, necessitating public awareness.

It’s a duality story set in a Pennsylvania town. Martha, a temporary worker in middle school cafeterias, abducts her doll “friends,” caging them in 4 x 4-foot closets with plexiglass fronts and mint green wooden frames similar to the doll boxes placed on a ledge outside each one. There are five on both sides of a narrow, dimly lit aisle. Her brutal discipline and rigid rituals reform the girls, or she starves them all to keep control. When the series ends, she kills them and begins anew. Her hunting grounds cover 100 miles and cross three state lines.

Sarah (12) carries the guilt of letting her best friend, Dixie (10), walk the last two blocks home from school, only to find her bookbag on the street curb and a white van racing away. Six months later, the next doll is released. The resemblance to Sarah was so uncanny that Martha abducts her, and for the first time in fifteen years, took two girls from the same town. When Sarah discovered Dixie was caged as well, she formed a plan to escape.

Jillian (40s), Sarah’s mother, and FBI Agent Karla Peterson (40s) differ in their approach to locating the girls until they realized the doll collection is the key. Peterson traced the doll look-alikes to the collection, found the pattern, and the areas from which they were taken. Jillian obtained information from the company about a special edition, separate from the collection. With no origin story or photo, Martha had to wait to hunt until her delivery arrived. With this abduction, the FBI tracked her to the dollhouse. Their rescue and the girls’ escape collide, but Dixie’s Stockholm syndrome will continue to haunt her, prompting a sequel