PLACE LAST SEEN

An elegant and agonizing story about the three-day search for a young child whose disappearance in the wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas wreaks emotional havoc on her family. Like such recent fiction as The Deep End of the Ocean, The Map of the World, and Evening News, Freeman’s debut starts with a domestic disaster'the inexplicable disappearance of little Maggie Baker Unlike many similar novels, though, this one explores the event and its aftermath with subtlety and restraint. Anne and Richard Baker and their two children'ten-year-old Luke and six-year-old Maggie, who has Down’s syndrome'are on a family hike near their home when Maggie, playing hide-and-seek with her brother, suddenly can't be found. Proud and educated yuppie parents, Anne and Richard soon call for an official search party, but Anne can't just become passive; she won't listen to the advice of so-called 'experts,' she won't stay out of the way, she won't cry on cue. Instead, she suffers deeply and wholly, examining and reexamining her feelings of guilt and loss and pain. Luke’s suffering, meanwhile (he was supposedly watching out for his sister), is achingly believable, and his relationship with his paternal grandmother'who comes to stay during the crisis' injects just the right amount of natural humor and ease. Particularly stunning in this already impressive novel is the way Anne addresses Maggie’s Down’s syndrome; the Bakers refuse both sympathy and blame for their daughter’s condition and, while they acknowledge that life would have been easier financially and logistically had their child not been born 'damaged,' they couldn't have lived without her. Suspenseful, painful, ultimately redemptive: a beautiful debut from a writer to watch.