You Believers

March 21, 2011
In her heartbreaking first novel, Bradley (Power Lines) takes an unflinching look at the nightmare of the missing person. When Katy Connor fails to come home, her fiancé is quick to assume she's run off with another man. But after days go by, Katy's mother, Livy, gets the police involved, and a complicated narrative unfolds. Many voices tell this story, from Katy's captors, a troubled young man and his wayward side-kick, to Katy herself, but the most striking narrator is Shelby Waters, a tough Southern woman who runs an organization dedicated to finding the missing and helping their families cope. As she attempts to keep Livy from falling apart, the brutal rape and assault of a young woman in a nearby gated community raises the stakes. The investigation progresses, but the chances of finding Katy dwindle, hope fades, and Shelby and Livy are forced to confront the reality that men rape women for fun and daughters go missing in the blink of an eye. Told bluntly from a cast of honest characters, Bradley's novel is haunting.