Overview

‘A blockbuster…a rich, moving and altogether stunning first novel. Readers will find this compelling and heartbreaking story – sure to be compared to The Good Mother – impossible to put down.’ Publishers Weekly

‘Watch your brother,’ says Beth Cappadora to her seven-year-old son Vincent. Only minutes later she turns again and asks, ‘Where’s Ben?’ It’s the moment that every mother fears: for three-year-old Ben is gone. And no one can find him.

Despite a police search that becomes a nationwide obsession, Ben has vanished, leaving behind a family that will be torn apart with anguish. Until, nine years later, the undreamed-of happens: a twelve-year-old boy knocks on their door – a boy who does not know them, but who will irrevocably twist their lives a second time…

Amazon Review

The horror of losing a child is somehow made worse when the case goes unsolved for nearly a decade, reports Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jacquelyn Mitchard in this searing first novel. In it, 3-year-old Ben Cappadora is kidnapped from a hotel lobby where his mother is checking into her 15th high school reunion. His disappearance tears the family apart and invokes separate experiences of anguish, denial, and self-blame. Marital problems and delinquency in Ben's older brother (in charge of him the day of his kidnapping) ensue. Mitchard depicts the family's friction and torment--along with many gritty realities of family life--with the candour of a journalist and compassion of someone who has seemingly been there. International publishing and film rights sold fast on this one--it's a blockbuster.

Review

‘So well observed and perceptive it’s hard to shy away from… masterfully paced… A story of one family’s slow tumble back into light.’
Los Angeles Times