Ghosts of the Missing

November 11, 2019
Aspiring artist Adair McCrohan, the protagonist of this evocative mystery from Donohoe (Ashes of Fiery Weather), has long been haunted by the never-solved 1995 disappearance of her childhood best friend, Rowan Kinnane, then 12, during the gleefully ghoulish annual pre-Halloween festivities in Culleton, N.Y. Now, in 2010, financial straits and health problems bring Adair back to the Hudson Valley town from Brooklyn to stay with her poet uncle, Michan McCrohan, at the family’s mansion-turned-writers-retreat, where he raised her following her parents’ deaths. As fate would have it, one of the writers in residence, Ciaran Riordan, who also has a personal connection to Rowan, is covertly investigating the girl’s disappearance. Eventually joining forces, the duo start to make some unsettling discoveries—not only about what may have befallen Rowan but also the secrets that have shaped their own lives. Donohoe’s narrative travels liberally between present and past, anchored by her strong Irish-American women. This well-crafted novel will also appeal to literary fiction fans. Agent: Caryn Karmatz Rudy, DeFiore & Co.

December 1, 2019
A young woman reckons with the ghosts of her past, both literal and metaphorical, when she returns to the site of a childhood tragedy. Culleton, New York, has a history of unsettling mysteries and books inspired by the disquieting atmosphere. Adair has returned to her hometown after a health crisis to convalesce in her childhood home, a writers' retreat overseen by her uncle and guardian. The return brings back memories of her childhood best friend and distant cousin, Rowan, who disappeared 15 years earlier when the girls were 12. When Rowan's half brother turns up at the retreat, working on a book about missing persons and asking for Adair's help in understanding the circumstances of his sister's disappearance, Adair has to reckon again with her memories of the event as well as the rest of the misfortunes of her young life. The chapters alternate among the perspectives of Adair in the present (which is 2010), Adair in 1995, and various people who have lived in Culleton since the 1800s. Donohoe (Ashes of Fiery Weather, 2017) is skilled at cultivating the pervasively disconcerting and melancholy atmosphere that surrounds both Culleton and Adair. There is an impressive weaving of science and mysticism so that when the reader realizes the "fact" behind a family's curse, it stays just as foreboding as it was when it was just fantastical. The novel is rooted in Irish lore, legends of upstate New York, and historical facts from the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and '90s. Despite centering the story of two people trying to discover what happened to a missing girl, this isn't a thriller but more of a meditation on loss and the power of memory and tradition. A reflective tale of a town's and a girl's histories through the lens of rumor, storytelling, and ghosts.

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December 1, 2019
Moye House, a writers' retreat in rural New York, has a melancholy air. Inhabitants have seen ghosts, and the family who owns the house was once said to be cursed as none of their boys survived an affliction that's now recognized as hemophilia. In the present day, one of the family's survivors, artist Adair, seeks to discover what happened to her friend Rowan, who disappeared as a 12-year-old; Adair's search is assisted by a visiting writer who is the missing girl's brother. This story has layers?the flashbacks to the past include ghosts, who are from an even earlier time; the sightings are at first presented as olden-days myths, but Adair is then revealed to regularly see the dead, or perhaps the missing; and Adair's family's infection with HIV from earlier transfusions is itself a malevolent visitation. The ending to the mystery of what happened to Rowan is unsatisfying, but, overall, Donohoe (Ashes of Fiery Weather, 2016) offers a thoughtful exploration of loss and of how the past reverberates in the present.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)