Barbara Van Laar has gone missing from the summer camp run by her family. Has she run away or been kidnapped? And is her disappearance connected to the disappearance of Bear, Barbara’s brother, who went missing 14 years ago?
This book was my book club’s latest pick. I thought it was a quick and easy read, and I’m pretty sure I read this book in about 2 days. The words seemed to flow off the page, and although the book was fairly long, the short chapters made it easy to read just one more chapter.
The mystery is good, and there are a lot of suspects. I suspected everyone. I confess, I did not guess what happened to Bear, but I had an inkling as to Barbara’s fate.
There are a lot of characters in the book and the book is told from multiple points of view in different time periods. The book shifts from the present with Barbara’s disappearance to the past when her brother disappeared. Although there are a lot of characters, I found it fairly easy to keep everyone straight in my head.
The book takes place in dual timelines, in the 1960s and in 1975, as we learn about both siblings’ disappearances and their aftermath. Honestly, it was kind of depressing to read about how women were treated during that time. Judyta, the female detective working on Barbara’s case, is one of the first women to graduate from her class. I had to grit my teeth when one of the other (male) detectives told her that she was “actually doing a good job!” Similarly, the way that Barbara’s mother was treated and the way that she was just shuttled off to the psychiatric ward and handed some pills after Bear disappeared made me so angry for her.
There are a lot of themes touched on in the book – traumatic childhoods, addiction, gender roles, and class differences. I really liked the way the author explored all of these and wrapped everything up.
You know, I’ve never been to summer camp, but after reading this book, I definitely don’t want to go.
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