The Disappearing
A Novel
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Best Books of 2018
Two-time Edgar Award-winning author Lori Roy spins a twisted, atmospheric tale about a small Southern town where girls disappear and boys run away.
When Lane Fielding fled her isolated Florida hometown after high school for the anonymity of New York City, she swore she'd never return. But twenty years later, newly divorced and with two daughters in tow, she finds herself tending bar at the local dive and living with her parents on the historic Fielding Plantation. Here, the past haunts her and the sinister crimes of her father--the former director of an infamous boys' school--make her as unwelcome in town as she was the day she left.
Ostracized by the people she was taught to trust, Lane's unsteady truce with the town is rattled when her older daughter suddenly vanishes. Ten days earlier, a college student went missing, and the two disappearances at first ignite fears that a serial killer who once preyed upon the town has returned. But when Lane's younger daughter admits to having made a new and unseemly friend, a desperate Lane attacks her hometown's façade to discover whether her daughter's disappearance is payback for her father's crimes--or for her own.
With reporters descending upon the town, police combing through the swamp, and events taking increasingly disturbing turns, Lane fears she faces too many enemies and too little time to bring her daughter safely home. Powerful and heart-pounding, The Disappearing questions the endurance of family bonds, the dangers of dark rumors and small town gossip, and how sometimes home is the scariest place of all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lane Fielding, the protagonist of this sinuous slow burn from Edgar-winner Roy (Let Me Die in His Footsteps), never wanted to return to her hometown of Waddell, Fla., but after her divorce, the unemployed single mother had no choice. Now she and her daughters, Annalee and Talley, live with Lane's elderly parents, Neil and Erma, in the historic Fielding Mansion. Next door is the shuttered reform school where former headmaster Neil is rumored to have savagely beaten and possibly killed numerous students long ago an allegation he denies. When a Florida State student who volunteers at the mansion goes missing, locals fear that a serial killer is stalking the region, but then Annalee disappears, too, causing Lane to worry that someone is exacting revenge for her father's supposed sins. Though Roy's characters are vividly sketched, their actions and intentions don't always ring true, which undercuts some of the plot's most shocking twists. Still, evocative writing and a tense, kaleidoscopic narrative conspire to create a tale that thrills and chills, even if it doesn't fully satisfy.
Customer Reviews
Amazing book.
This book was a work of art for me. I was very shocked with the ending, the book kept me on my toes, and had everything I want in a book in it. Very pleased with The Disappearing by Lori Roy.
Can you handle the truth?
“Mama once said the truth always rises, sometimes in the ugliest of ways. And if you fear it, it will come for you”
Lane Fielding has returned home after divorcing the man she’d run away with decades before. The Fielding Plantation holds many secrets within its walls; secrets that hide in the mind of its inhabitants and secrets you can’t really run from because they bring you back, or you bring them out of hiding in your return.
Told in the various voices of Lane, her two daughters, her parents Erma and Neil and the echoes of the ones buried in the cemetery next door,author Lori Roy brings a compelling view of The Old South although what seems to have increasingly “disappeared” is the actual truth.Recommended 5/5
[I received this book from the author, winning it from an online book review site. I chose to voluntarily review it]
Excellent
I have read two of Lori Roy’s books and they were both really well written as well as entertaining.