The Child Finder

July 17, 2017
An investigator seeks missing children in the remote reaches of an Oregon forest in this intense novel by Denfeld (The Enchanted). Private investigator Naomi cannot remember anything in her life before running in terror through a dark strawberry field as a child. Now in her late 20s, the titular “child finder” carries the burdens of a solitary career finding missing children. Her newest case—the disappearance of five-year-old Madison Culver three years ago somewhere in a glacier-studded national forest in rural Oregon—collides with a time of sickness and loneliness within her little remaining family. Her foster brother, Jerome, who suffers from a war injury, must care for the woman who raised them, Mrs. Cottle, while Naomi works. As Naomi follows clues, her lucid dreams become clearer, and the voice of an unnamed child tells her own story as the search for Madison unfolds. Using multiple voices, Denfeld takes an innovative approach to dealing with the pain of trauma, taking moments of darkness and frailty and probing them in heartbreaking, surprising ways. Naomi is a broken but ethical protagonist who always holds out hope: for the children yet to be found, the adults searching for missing loved ones, and herself as she tries to overcome past traumas. The conclusion will leave readers breathless.

Naomi is a private investigator with a passion for finding missing children. In her current case she sets out to find Madison Culver, "The Snow Child," who disappeared three years earlier while her family was picking out a Christmas tree. Narrator Alyssa Bresnahan uses a fittingly solemn tone for a bleak and disturbing story. When Denfeld's story changes its point of view, Bresnahan's delivery makes the shifts clear. She poetically delivers Denfeld's prose with meaning and a tone of vulnerability and recounts the pasts of both Naomi and Madison hauntingly. The suspense of the story is magnified by her impressive narration. The story line, the connections between characters, and the compelling ending will not disappoint. D.Z. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

August 1, 2017
A gifted investigator combs Oregon's snowy mountain forests for a missing girl.Naomi Cottle is a child finder. Grieving families call on her when their children go missing, and she devotes her entire life to finding them, sometimes dead and sometimes miraculously alive. Like many literary detectives, her personal life suffers for her single-mindedness: she has few friends and remains in only intermittent contact with her foster family. In her latest case, she's been asked to find a girl named Madison Culver, who went missing three years ago, at the age of 5. Although the locals assume Madison froze to death, Naomi, propelled by her own vague early memories of being held hostage as a child, is determined to locate the girl. At the same time Naomi searches for clues in Madison's disappearance, readers are privy to Madison's narrative as she's locked in a cellar with a man she knows only as B. With nothing but her daydreams and memories of fairy tales to keep her sane, Madison reinvents herself as the snow girl and wonders whether the life she once had is gone forever. Aside from a clumsy subplot about Naomi searching for a baby from an impoverished community, Denfeld (The Enchanted, 2014, etc.) keeps the pacing quick as readers rush to discover Madison's fate. While Denfeld's message is meant to be redemptive--no loved child will ever be forgotten--make no mistake: this is also a book that is frankly about the sexual abuse of children. And though Denfeld is no doubt trying to explore the psychological realities of this abuse, and of conditions like Stockholm syndrome, her tendency toward florid writing can make her depiction feel romanticized and takes the book at times from disquieting into downright unpalatable. Denfeld's intentions are good, but her tone strikes the wrong notes.

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August 1, 2017
Denfeld, whose first novel, The Enchanted (2014), explored the mythic properties and imaginative possibilities of prison, again finds inspiration in dark places. Naomi has earned a reputation as an investigator with a gift for finding missing children, or determining for certain that they will not be found. This time Naomi, once a lost child herself, seeks Madison Culver, who disappeared three years ago, at age five, during a family outing to chop down a Christmas tree in Oregon's beautiful, snow-laden, and inhospitable Skookum forest. Into Naomi's search for Madison, her tentative prodding at her own past, and involvement in a missing-baby case, Denfeld splices in the narration of a young snow girl, who is imaginatively surviving her violent imprisonment with the unspeaking Mr. B, whom she believes is her husband, by adopting an identity from her favorite Russian fairy tale. Aptly unclassifiable, Denfeld's compulsively readable second novel calls on elements of horror, suspense, and fairy tales to explore legacies of abuse and the resilience of the most vulnerable among us.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)