It's the summer of 2005 and 18-year-old Kim Larsen is about to escape her stifling Ohio hometown for the freedom of college. Carefree and confident, she heads out for the late shift at the Conoco mini mart where she and a girlfriend work "like two captured mermaids displayed in a tank." But Kim never shows up at work and never returns home. It isn't until the following morning that Kim's parents, Ed and Fran, realize she is missing and begin a frantic search that will go on for years without resolution. The police can't be sure that, as an adult, Kim hasn't disappeared intentionally, but the Larsens (including Kim's sulky, nerdy younger sister Lindsay) are sure that Kim has been abducted. Fran gives a press conference and organizes volunteers to search in groups. Ed follows a lead to a neighboring town and stays there for six weeks. The seasons turn, and Kim's friends leave for college. Volunteers dwindle. Lindsay compensates by attempting to become "perfect." One year closes and then another with no leads and no closure.
O'Nan shifts his point of view between Kim's parents, sister and friends and hits each with pointillist accuracy, creating complex portraits of each individual as well as the shifting mood of the town itself. Most impressive, however, is the precision with which O'Nan conveys the transformation of a family's fresh terror into a kind of quotidian torture as the weeks and months drag on. There is a measure of suspense here too, but, just as he did with the terrific Last Night at the Lobster, O'Nan creates his narrative tension out of the relationships between his multilayered characters. There is none of the easy sensationalism here that his subject might suggest and not a single wasted sentence. Powerful, honest and at times elegiac, this absorbing and masterfully written novel is not to be missed.--Debra Ginsberg
Shelf Talker: A brilliantly observed novel about a family's worst nightmare that lingers in the imagination long after the last page is turned.