by Jon McGregor
First published 2017
When a teenage girl vanishes from their English village in the depths of winter, the entire community mobilizes to find her. Villagers spread across the windswept moors while police block roads and reporters swarm their normally quiet home. But life continues its relentless pace. Cows need milking, fences require mending, stone must be cut, pints served, beds turned, sermons prepared, and the annual pantomime rehearsed. As months turn to years and the girl remains missing, the village transforms around her absence. Some residents depart while others return home. Relationships form and shatter. Children are born, elders die, secrets surface and hide again, fortunes rise and fall. Small acts of kindness alternate with unexpected cruelties. The search never truly ends, but it changes shape as thirteen years pass. The natural world continues its ancient cycles while the human community struggles with its capacity for both tenderness and harm. The girl's disappearance becomes woven into the fabric of village life, an absence that shapes everything that follows.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: ensemble-cast, slow-burn
Setting: England
Period: Contemporary
Audio CD · Blackstone Publishing