“Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.”
It’s early morning, August 1975 and Barbara Van Laar has gone missing. She’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished 14 years ago, never to be found. As a search begins, we find ourselves chasing down the secrets of the Van Laar family, their history, the 14-year-old stone cold case and the blue-collar community working in the shadow of this powerful family.
“It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together.”
Liz Moore is the writer of Long Bright River which was a huge hit during the pandemic. I remember being the odd man out on that book because I did not like it and gave it 2 stars. I also realized that I had read her 2016 novel, The Unseen World, which I frankly have no recollection of reading, but Goodreads tells me I gave this book 4 stars. Anyway, I wasn’t going to read this book because it was getting so much hype, and I remembered my experience of her previous book and was going to stay away until I saw her on Obama’s list. I was intrigued that a mystery novel made it on there, so I decided to finally pick it up and was not disappointed.
“This is one of the few sheer pleasures Louise knows in life: the near-otherworldly feeling of touching another human’s body with your own body in a way that, for the first time, transcends mere friendliness. These are the times in her life that Louise has felt most acutely the animal nature of her humanity, and therefore they have been the most comforting. To be a human is complex, and often painful; to be an animal is comfortingly simple and good.”
This book is a master class in well written prose. I thought the descriptions and the turn of phrases were fantastic. This story is told through multiple perspectives taking us on a history journey through the Van Laar family. We get Tracy, a young meek girl who is suffering from her parents’ divorce and is sent to this camp by her father for the summer to avoid actually spending time with her. Alice, mother of the missing Barbara who also lost her son 14 years ago and is addicted to pills having never gotten over the disappearance of her son. Louise, a 26 year old camp counselor who is “engaged” to a boy from a wealthy family and wonders if this will be her ticket out of poverty until she encounters what it’s like to become a scapegoat to a family that finds you expendable and Judy, the first female investigator in the state at 26 who is smart, observant and very good at her job.
“she also believed that part of a mother’s duty was to be her daughter’s first, best critic; to fortify her during her childhood, so that in womanhood she could gracefully withstand any assault or insult launched in her direction. This was the method her own mother had used upon her. She hadn’t liked it at the time, but now she understood it.”
This book was a 5-star read for me till the end when I deducted a star because it was the worst ending. The author takes us through the book and dangles multiple suspects at us only to completely drop all of them for an ending that I found so unrealistic and ridiculous. I can’t believe her editor let her keep that ending. It just did not work for me at all. I gave this book 4 stars because I did not think the ending lived up to the entire work for me, but I still recommend it for the journey.
Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments.
Leggy
TwoNightStands 