The Sweet Relief of Missing Children: A Novel - Hardcover

Braunstein, Sarah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393076598 ISBN 13: 9780393076592

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

Synopsis

"A magnificent debut filled with characters so vivid, strange, and richly imagined, you emerge feeling changed."--Sarah Shun-lien Bynum


In New York City, a girl called Leonora vanishes without a trace. Years earlier and miles upstate, Goldie, a wild, negligent mother, searches for a man to help raise her precocious son, Paul, who later discovers that the only way to save his soul is to run away. As the narrative moves back and forth in time, we find deeper interconnections between these stories and growing clues about Leonora--this missing girl whose face looks out from telephone poles and billboards--whom one character will give anything to save.

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children is a suspenseful novel about the power of running and the desire for reinvention. It explores the terror and transcendence of our most central experiences: childhood, parenthood, sex, love.

About this title

About the Author:

Sarah Braunstein is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Writers' Award and was named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35." She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Portland, Maine.

From Booklist:

Braunstein won the 2007 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and was named as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35,” which recognizes five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award winners and finalists. Her debut novel is an unsettling read that is also strangely compelling, though the author reserves all of her compassion for her characters, sparing none for her readers. It follows the meandering, intertwining stories of three young people who go missing. Twelve-year-old Leonora is snatched from a street corner and finds that her upbringing, which has taught her to be sweet and polite, works against her. Sixteen-year-old Paul runs away from his negligent mother and abusive stepfather only to end up drifting for years on end. Teenager Judith, looking for excitement, lands in a seedy hotel room covered in cigarette burns and sadly disabused of her adventurous spirit; even when Judith placidly settles into marriage and parenthood, her “dull, bright, busy” life has its own kind of horror. Through random encounters and elliptical dialogue, Braunstein locates the pain in these people’s lives and makes it shimmer. --Joanne Wilkinson

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0393076598
• ISBN 13: 9780393076592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 363