When She Was Gone

March 18, 2013
Gross (The Orphan Sister) investigates the claustrophobia of the quiet, suburban New Jersey neighborhood where 17-year-old Linsey Hart has gone missing. Through multiple accountsâfrom the perspective of Linsey's friends, family, and neighborsâhints to the disappearance are gradually revealed. Next door neighbor Mr. Leonard, a retired music teacher suffering from colon cancer, was the last to see Linsey alive, while Reeva, a housewife with three children, frets over hiding her affair with a much younger man. Abigail Stein, Linsey's mother, discovers how alienated the neighbors have become while trying to solicit help tracking down her missing daughter. Timmy, Linsey's love-stricken ex-boyfriend, refuses to give up the search and enlists 10-year-old George Whitebread, a boy with a penchant for taking pictures of neighborhood denizens, to help unravel the mystery of Linsey's disappearance. At times, Gross stumbles as she attempts to bring inessential characters into the fold, but the distinct voices of her main characters shine through to reveal a community roiled by the mysterious disappearance of one of their own.

January 1, 2013
A teenage girl goes missing, and the reader learns the intertwining stories of her family and neighbors. The author's knowledge of and love for music are evident in the chapters told from the perspective of the missing girl's next-door neighbor, Mr. Leonard, a retired music teacher and pianist. Readers who love Liszt, Chopin, Brahms and other classical composers will find their reading experience enhanced. The stories revolve around childhood difficulties, parenting difficulties and the companionship (or lack thereof) in marriages, as well as the various kinds of secrets that people keep. The author creates a mystery surrounding the whereabouts and fate of the unusually mature 17-year-old Linsey. Along the way, other mysteries and conflicts are raised and resolved, all with an eye toward offering insights into relationships: relationships with loved ones, relationships with neighbors, relationships with those we might not ordinarily notice or care about. Death, life, redemption and music combine in a rewarding novel.

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March 1, 2013
Just before she's supposed to start her freshman year at college, Linsey Hart goes missing. Her absence rocks the insular commuter community, whose hypocritical residents publicly wonder how such a thing could happen, while privately disdaining the people and events at the center of Linsey's life. Her neighbor, Mr. Leonard, muses about Linsey's disappearance as he plays Rachmaninoff nocturnes while wearing his deceased mother's evening gown. George, an 11-year-old social misfit, surreptitiously photographs the town's denizens, searching for clues as to Linsey's whereabouts. Randy, middle-aged soccer mom Reeva mourns the loss of Linsey as a babysitter for her autistic son, but not to the point where it interferes with her affair with Jordan, a Starbucks barista half her age. Meanwhile, Linsey's ex-boyfriend Timmy and her mother, Abigail, each grapple with self-recriminations over their roles in driving Linsey away. Gross' canny twist on the missing-child trope is less a taunting mystery than a caustic indictment of the superficiality of suburban mores and morals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)