Archive for the ‘missing children’ Tag
In The God of the Woods author Liz Moore crafts a fast-paced, engaging mystery that addresses long-held family secrets and the bonds they stretch.
The novel deftly moves between two decades, primarily 1961 and 1975. One August morning of that latter year, at Camp Emerson in rural upstate New York, Barbara, a camper, is discovered missing. What ensues is a search involving local and state authorities.
Although it shouldn’t matter, there’s additional intensity involved in finding the girl: she’s the daughter of the camp’s owner; she’s also the sister of the young boy who disappeared from the same area long ago. The boy’s body was never found creating double intrigue.
Moore’s narrative includes the parents’ histories, how the camp came to exist, vivid descriptions of the environs and several distinct, interesting and strong females. Chief among them are Barbara’s camp counselor, the camp director and a female investigator on her first case. Barbara’s character is also well developed. She comes across as a self-assured teen whose parents give her little attention and is in the shadow of her brother who went missing years before she was born.
Barbara’s family is wealthy and demanding; she’s viewed by her parents, particularly her overbearing father, as a trouble maker. Her mother is easily dismissed by those around her; she’s lost in grief and dependent on pills and alcohol.
There are plenty of theories and possible suspects in both missing persons’ cases, which adds to the whodunit. Yet, Moore’s playbook is far from formulaic.
The God of the Woods
Four Bookmarks
Riverhead Books, 2024
478 pages
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng starts slow; initially it’s too easy to put down, until, well, it isn’t.
Much has to do with the mystery surrounding the absence of 12-year-old Bird’s mother who his father refuses to acknowledge while insisting his son to do the same. They live in a not-too-distant dystopian world where fear and suspicion rule based on safeguarding America’s culture known as PACT.
It’s a time when children are removed from parents suspected of seditious thoughts and behaviors. Those of Chinese, and by default all Asians, are considered threats. Bird’s mother Margaret is Chinese American and a poet. Her work goes largely unnoticed until one day PACT protesters use a line from one of her poems for their cause: Our Missing Hearts. To protect her son, she leaves the family.
Despite his father’s pleas, Bird’s curiosity about his mother becomes a driving force. These efforts to find her are where the narrative revs up.
Margaret’s story catches the past up with the present. This includes her childhood in the neighborhood’s only Asian family, later surviving on the streets when the economy collapses (blamed on the Chinese), and meeting Bird’s father and becoming a mother.
It’s been years since Margaret has written poetry, but she embraces a new passion based on the protester’s slogan: she tries to meet and interview as many parents as possible whose children have been taken from them.
Ng’s writing is vivid and frightening in its depiction of how self-preservation is manipulated by fear.
Out Missing Hearts
Four Bookmarks
Penguin Press, 2022
335 pages (includes author’s notes and acknowledgements)
The Blue Page Special 