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.

June 1, 2011

This first novel by short story author Bradley is a masterly addition to the bad-things-happen-to-beautiful-people thriller genre. It has all the elements: the competent investigator, in this case the steely Shelby Waters, a petite woman from down-home Tennessee who devotes her life to finding missing persons after her sister was kidnapped and murdered, and the nail-biting buildup, as we follow two young women who are stalked by Jesse, a psychopathic killer. Hired by the mother of Jesse's first victim, Shelby marshals volunteers to post flyers and search the countryside, shepherds the police on the case, and guides the mother through the agonizing wait until her daughter's fate is known. Bradley treads a fine line between the realistic and the supernatural; Shelby displays an almost paranormal bond with victims, and Jesse seems to be evil personified, yet the police do most of the legwork, and Jesse's behavior has roots in his parents' crack use. VERDICT A compelling crime story and a credible picture of the intersection of rural poverty and the New South. A broad audience will like this, including readers of Jodi Picoult and James Patterson.--Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2011
Bradley gives readers a searing three-dimensional look at a horrific crime in her mesmerizing debut, which is narrated in turn by everyone affected by the cold-blooded murder, including the sweet-natured victim, the sociopathic killer, his weak-willed companion, and most memorably, the tough, brave woman who heads a search team. When Katy Connor goes missing, her boyfriend and her mother spend the first week in a perpetual state of limbo, too scared to think the worst but, as the days go by, too numb to hope for her return. Its only Shelby Waters, the woman who heads an all-volunteer search-and-rescue team, who seems to know just what they need to hear and what they should be doing to locate their missing loved one. Shelby is motivated by her own private grief over her older sister, who was murdered years ago, her body scattered in the woods. In a riveting narrative, Bradley offers both unending compassion and a chilling assessment of the kind of harm that people are able and willing to inflict on one another. In heartrending detail, she lays out the ruined lives and broken hearts inevitably left in the wake of those ubiquitous missing posters tacked up in store windows. Harrowing reading from a gifted writer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)