The Disappearance

Efrem Sigel
The Permanent Press (2009)
ISBN 9781579621803
Reviewed by Danielle Feliciano for Reader Views (2/09)

 

In the blink of an eye your world can change.  Nobody realizes this more than parents Joshua and Nathalie Sandler.  New Yorkers who summer in a tiny Hamlet in Massachusetts, they find their world turned upside down in the aftermath of the disappearance of their fourteen-year-old son, Daniel.  In the year following Daniel’s disappearance, we will follow Nathalie deeper and deeper into despair as she turns inward in an attempt to deal with what she has lost. We follow Joshua on his desperate journey to find out what happened to his son before it is too late. 

Skipping frequently from present to past and back again, the reader is treated to a very full picture of each character in the book. In addition to the Sandlers are Daniel’s friends who may or may not have something to do with what happened, a power-hungry town selectman, a sheriff of a small town suddenly faced with big-city problems, and an unlikely ally found in a beautiful woman. 

As he leads up to a heartbreaking ending in “The Disappearance,” Efrem Sigel does a fine job of drawing the reader into the lives of the Sandlers and those who surround them. However, the flipping back and forth between present and past happened to be a bit too much for my taste.  At times it was not done smoothly enough to know what was going on which caused some confusion. Also, while I appreciate detail in building up a story, Sigel drowns the book in details which takes away from the story. There were times that I found myself skimming because I felt like I had been reading the same thing for too long.

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