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Ask any parent. The one fear that keeps them up at night, counting benevolent coup on their sleeping offspring, is the thought of their child being abducted. I cannot think of anything worse. Think Mel Gibson in Ransom. Accordingly, one cannot casually pick up REMEMBERING SARAH, Chris Mooney's new novel about a young daughter who goes missing. This is a tale that will demand a block of time, all at once, from the novel's start to end, in one sitting.
Mooney's masterful narrative makes for effortless reading. His method of reader entrapment in REMEMBERING SARAH utilizes his ability to transform an everyday occurrence into an abject vehicle of terror. Men and women, ergo, mothers and fathers, are different. Mothers generally tend to be a bit more sheltering of their children; dads, in the main, take more chances, though not to a reckless extent. Accordingly, when Mike and Jess Sullivan have a difference of opinion as to whether Sarah, their six-year-old daughter and only child, should go sledding, this is something that every parent understands. Mike wants Sarah to be strong and independent, while Jess worries about the bigger children playing on the hill and possibly hurting Sarah.
What is great here, right out of the gate, is that Mooney makes the reader understand and sympathize with both parents. When Jess forbids --- forbids --- Sarah to go sledding, we understand where she's coming from. And when Mike packs Sarah up as soon as Jess leaves the house and takes her to the sledding hill, we understand that too. Mooney takes us to the hill, and you can feel the cold, hear the children and see them flying down the hill with great abandon. And when Sarah wants to walk up the hill with an older friend and without her dad ... we've been there, that point where you say yes, go ahead, and you watch your child take those first steps toward independence. We don't blame Mike when Sarah, without warning, disappears. And we don't blame Jess when she ultimately leaves him.
Five years pass. Mike is going through the motions of his life, functioning yet badly damaged, unable to let go of the loss of his daughter. The only suspect in Sarah's disappearance is Francis Jonah, a defrocked priest, now terminally ill, who is believed to be responsible for the disappearance of two other girls. Mike, forbidden by court order to even go near Jonah, finds his world turned upside down when on the anniversary of Sarah's disappearance her jacket is discovered by Jonah. Jonah has at best weeks to live, and Mike is certain that the knowledge of Sarah's fate will die with him.
But there are other considerations as well. Mike's father, from whom he has been estranged for many years, suddenly reappears, offering to help and inadvertently supplying a fateful clue as to what happened to Sarah. His reappearance, however, turns old scars into fresh wounds. Mike's mother herself disappeared when he was young, and he has always suspected that his father was responsible for her vanishing. Mike, before REMEMBERING SARAH is concluded, will find that everything he thought he knew was wrong.
Mooney is a fabulous storyteller. Virtually every character here is a memorable one, and I challenge all the gentlemen out there to read REMEMBERING SARAH without vicariously falling in love with Samantha Ellis --- and she's an attorney! That said, I have a spot of trouble with REMEMBERING SARAH. My problem is that I loved it, found it riveting, enthralling, scary, and all that good stuff up until the last 50 pages or so, when I thought that Mooney dropped the ball with an ending that didn't quite add up. In the interest of full disclosure, I was troubled on a personal level by his choice of villain, one who is considered fair game by segments of the populace.
Is my objection to the ending colored by my personal beliefs? Possibly. But what cannot be argued is that REMEMBERING SARAH is, for most of its three hundred-plus pages, simply impossible to put down. Ending aside, that makes it a winner.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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