Where You Can Find Me

February 15, 2013
A family moves to Costa Rica to heal from a kidnapping. At age 11, Caleb Vincent was abducted and imprisoned in a basement, then starved and trafficked by a ring of pedophiles. Discovered by the FBI living with a man nicknamed Jolly, Caleb, 14, is brought home from Washington state to his parents in Atlanta. Marlene, his mother, never lost hope for Caleb's return, but his father, Jeff, had at one point given him up for dead. To escape her shaky marriage and the intrusive media that hounds the family day and night, Marlene moves herself, Caleb and 11-year old daughter, Lark, to Costa Rica to live in the cloud forest at a ramshackle hotel owned by Jeff's mother, Hilda. As the narration dips in and out of Caleb's head, the reader only gradually learns what happened to him during his disappearance. Jolly, it emerges, is a doctor who rescued Caleb from the pedophiles and took a paternal as well as sexual interest in him. The paternal won out when Jolly encouraged Caleb to attend school, thus facilitating another rescue, this time by authorities. So ambivalent is Caleb about his feelings for Jolly that he refuses to cooperate with the FBI's prosecution of him (the original kidnappers are still at large) and cannot resist making contact with Jolly from Costa Rica. Meanwhile, other sexually charged scenarios play out: Marlene rekindles an old romance with her husband's brother, Lowell, and Caleb dates a local girl, Isabel, while not so secretly yearning for her transvestite cousin, Luis. Joseph approaches this explosive material with circumspection, perhaps excessively: So much time is devoted to atmospheric but aimless descriptions of Costa Rican scenery, flora and fauna that at times the travelogue overwhelms the plot, which unfolds at a leisurely, tropical pace. However, Joseph's preoccupations are less with plot than with honestly confronting the internal conflicts that can arise in reaction to unspeakable crimes. A fraught subject, handled with gravitas and, improbably, grace.

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November 15, 2012

The mother of a teenage boy rescued from a kidnapper moves him and his sister to Costa Rica, hoping that the family can heal. Joseph has proven herself by winning the Grub Street National Book Prize, not to mention a half-dozen fellowships and residencies, and the publisher is hoping that this book will break her out.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2013
Caleb Vincent, kidnapped at age 11 by a violent pedophile, is miraculously returned to his stunned family three years later. His mother, Marlene, who has been utterly consumed with looking for him, decides to flee the paparazzi staked out in front of their house and take him to Costa Rica, where her mother-in-law runs a wildlife preserve. His father is guilt-stricken because he had given his son up for dead, while Caleb's 11-year-old sister, Lark, thinks of her brother as having been to The Gone: Dorothy up in the tornado; Alice down the rabbit hole. At the heart of the story is shell-shocked Caleb, who now feels like damaged goods and finds himself still drawn to the man he thought of as his father. In the exotic environment of Costa Rica, where no one knows his backstory and where his bohemian uncle forges a light and easy relationship with him, Caleb is finally able to begin to understand just what has happened. Joseph (Stray, 2007) turns the sensationalistic story of an abused boy who has seen the darkest parts of life into a transformative and often suspense-filled tale of identity and resilience. A deeply moving novel about a family determined to survive the greatest of tragedies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)