by Tim Winton
First published 2004
Fred Scully stands at the international arrivals gate, watching for his wife and seven-year-old daughter to emerge. Two years in Europe have ended, and he expects they will finally build something permanent together. He has prepared everything for their new beginning. In the Irish countryside sits a cottage he restored with his own hands, room by room, board by board. Scully needs this reunion desperately. Solitude weighs on him like a physical burden. The plane touches down. Passengers stream through the sliding glass doors. Then his carefully constructed future collapses in an instant. His wife and daughter are not on the flight. Scully must confront the possibility that they may never come at all. What follows is a man's desperate search across Europe for the family that has vanished from his life, and his struggle with the loneliness he cannot bear to face.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: missing-person, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Europe, Ireland
Period: 20th-century
Audio CD · Bolinda Audio