The Missing

Seems like a long time since I have posted here...I got off to a rough start after my last post. Started 2 different books, and gave up on them. But I got The Missing by Tim Gautreaux from the library, and it was a stick-to-it! I had read his earlier book, The Clearing, and so I felt pretty good about trying it...and it was a good one.

The story is of Sam Simoneaux, whose family was murdered when he was an infant. He was raised by his aunt and uncle in a loving home, and never gave much thought to the fact that they were not his parents. When Sam grew up, he joined in the fight in WWI, and ended up saving a young child before he left France. He returned to the States, married, and became a floorwalker at a department store in New Orleans (where he was from). One day, a little girl, three years old, was kidnapped from the store and Sam was fired for not following proper protocol. He was told that if he found the child, he could have his job back.

The child, her brother and her parents were musician/entertainers on a boat that traveled up and down the Mississippi. Sam figured that someone had seen the child on one of the boat's stops and so, he got hired on the boat and became friends with the family. Most of the story is about the search for the little girl.

As Sam searches for the child and watches what the family is going through, he begins to question his own background and starts to ask questions about his family, their murder, and the murderers.

It is a good story and I liked how the story of the missing child played into his own deepest (and unknown) feelings. I like his writing style, and how he writes about the South, but I did feel that the book got a little bogged down at times. However, with perseverance, it was a good read.

2 Books

I read Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. It was for my book group. Interesting book, non-fiction, and certainly not one that I would ever have picked up on my own to read. I had trouble getting into it, but because it was for my book group, I stuck with it, and surprisingly, that was a good choice! It got much better and I ended up enjoying the story. Learned lots, as I did not know anything about deep sea diving.

The story is about weekend divers who discovered a WWI German U-Boat off the coast of New Jersey in 1991. Yet, all records indicated that there was never a submarine sunk there. The book alternates between the men diving to find treasures and the search to learn what boat this is, then who was on the boat. There appeared to be great reverence for the bodies that have laid undersea for the past 50 years, and some of the divers became intent on learning more about the submarine crew.

I especially found the search for the historical records and families most interesting, since the searches were very much genealogical in nature. Right up my alley!

It was a good book and I recommend it!

Last night I completed The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudendauf. It was an easy read, good story, nothing too deep (pun intended!). Two little girls go missing one early morning, assumedly together. One of the little girls has been selectively mute for the last 3 or 4 years. It really was a story about a marriage and its effect on the wife and children. Husband was an abusive alcoholic. As I said, it was an easy read...each chapter was told by different characters: the mother, the missing daughter, the son, the police officer, the father of the other missing girl.

The ending was rather predictable, I thought. I won't tell the ending, but just say that I was pretty sure it wasn't who was the obvious.