Starred review from June 17, 2024
In 1975 Missouri, 13-year-old orphan Saint Brown and her scruffy, eye patch–wearing classmate, Patch Macauley, are drawing closer by the day when Patch’s disappearance rips them apart—setting in motion this lyrical, decades-spanning outing from Whitaker (We Begin at the End), which is both a riveting serial killer thriller and a heartrending love story. Before tragedy, however, comes triumph: Patch strikes a man attempting to abduct local golden girl Misty Meyer—Patch’s secret crush—with a rock from his slingshot, allowing Misty to escape. By the time police arrive, however, the only trace of Patch is his bloodied T-shirt. The colder the investigation becomes, the stronger Saint’s resolve grows to find her friend, a task to which she applies both precocious deductive skills and ferocious tenacity—traits that will prove invaluable in her future with the FBI. Meanwhile, Patch withers away in an undisclosed location, growing obsessed with a young woman being held in captivity with him. When Saint and Patch finally do reunite, they’re both irrevocably changed. With deeply affecting characters and ambition to spare, Whitaker has conjured a dazzling epic that defies easy categorization. It’s astonishing. Agent: Jennifer Joel, CAA.

Starred review from July 15, 2024
A one-eyed boy becomes a monster's prey in this chilling tale of missing children. Thirteen-year-old Missouri boy Joseph "Patch" Macauley was born with one eye, so he wears an eye patch and imagines himself a pirate. In 1975, he sees a masked man assaulting a girl in the woods. He attacks the man and saves her, but the predator kidnaps him instead. Patch eventually wakes in total darkness in a cellar where a different girl secretly visits him, heard but always unseen. He learns that her name is Grace and that there have been other girls down there before. Grace paints vivid word pictures of the places she's seen and of stories by authors like Steinbeck. "Pray and stay alive," she whispers to Patch. Eventually he escapes, but she is nowhere to be found. Searching for Grace is the underlying thread in a complicated quest that takes unexpected turns over the years and might well bring heartbreak. Meanwhile, the bodies of three girls turn up locally, and their parents grieve. Is the town doctor responsible for their deaths? A local school photographer? Both? Patch paints an image of Grace based only on what he'd heard from her in the cellar; then come more paintings and displays in an art gallery--an implausible achievement for an untrained artist. Meanwhile, Grace may be anywhere, and he must find her whether alive or dead. By now an adult, he "pinball[s]" from state to state, meeting with "a dozen families looking for a dozen lost girls." To sustain himself he robs banks with an unloaded flintlock, and he shares his loot with organizations that are looking for missing children. He has "reasoned the truest proof of life [is] pain," and he vows that he will die before he quits his search. This is much more than a whodunit, though it fills that bill well. It is also a richly layered tale of love, loss, and hope. A grim theme with a compelling and complex plot.

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