3.5 read in two sittings ( )

I finished this book club selection in a span of 24 hours. I absolutely loved this lovely, hopeful, painful, haunting story of missing children and the woman who is drawn to finding them. ( )

Riveting story of investigator Naomi Cottle, once an abducted child herself, who has quietly helped law enforcement & grieving parents find one lost/missing child after another. Whether the child is already dead, or abducted and alive-- somewhere-- Naomi has pursued training & uses her finely honed people assessment skills to unravel the mystery of a child who is momentarily there, & then just gone. The main thrust of the narrative focuses on her pursuit of a little girl, Madison, who wanders away -just in a moment - from her family as they explore the edges of the Skookum Nat'l Forest in Oregon on a snowy winter day. Three years later, after exhaustive searches & a thorough investigation, common sense & law enforcement accepts the fact that little Madison certainly became disoriented in the thick forest & succumbed to a crevasse, to the snow, and/or the bitter cold. without any signs of struggle, hints of her path taken, etc she must be dead. But her mother insists she's alive.
Enjoyed the building tension - and the alternate narratives of Naomi's investigation, and the little girl's experience with "B", the mute/deaf mountain trapper who finds her and takes her to his remote cabin high up in the mountains miles from the road. This was expertly done; the poetic asides " the wind sighed, and knew the sun's warmth, etc etc" sort of passages weren't as effective as I think the author intended. Nevertheless, her ability to evoke the agony of parents' sorrow, the sadness & resignation of law officers, the emotional warmth and sympathy for all the characters involved - this was compelling. ( )

Sometime during one of the big Amazon sales of ebooks during the Christmas season, I picked this one up after seeing the starred reviews. I was looking for a good thriller and wanted something for the new year. This was such a “fun” book that I couldn’t put it down and read it in almost a day.

Naomi is a child finder. When the police have a case going cold and give up looking for a lost child, Naomi can be called by parents as a private investigator. She is blunt to the parents in her manner of speaking, but is excellent at what she does. Naomi never gives up.

Madison is an 8 year old snow child. She lives and was born in the cellar of Mr. B. She has some memories of a past little girl named Madison, but she is a snow girl born 3 years ago. Mr B can be very cruel at times, but each and every day, her relationship with Mr B grows. She has made it her mission to touch his heart and help him realize he is a snow child too.

Madison is the little girl Naomi is searching for and will not stop until she finds her. The problem is she is in a place in Oregon where there is perpetual snow, deep forests, and tons of tunnels. Finding Madison will be tricky, especially since Naomi still needs to deal with issues from her past.

The entire book is told in a back and forth perspective between Madison and Naomi within the chapters. Time also jumps a little as we learn about Naomi’s past and her past traumas. There is also a side case Naomi is working on at the same time, so we jump there on occasion. There is no warning for the jumps and it takes a moment to get oriented, but it flows quite nicely.

The technique that most stood out for me in this book is how little violence there is. This is a horrific story, as is the side story. There are some horrific things that happen, for example, Mr B rapes Madison, but it happens off page and there are no details of it as Madison doesn’t know what happened. It is completely left up to the reader to fill in the blanks. There are no gory descriptions of things, there is very little violence (Mr B hunts and there are descriptions of skinning the animal), yet there are some graphic and cringe worthy activities that happen, but everything is off the page or something else is described. Naomi finds a dead body at one point, but rather than talk about what she is seeing, she just describes that she knows there is a body because of the smell, so she describes the smell. It was very clever.

If you are looking for a quick thriller to start your year off, check this one out. I really enjoyed the time with it. I gave it 4 stars.

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3.5 ⭐ ( )