THE LAST BOY

An empty-at-the-center ecothriller in which the disappearance, and then reappearance, of a boy in the town of Ithaca, New York, makes him a new messiah.

Harried single mother Molly Driscoll comes to pick up her four-year-old son Danny from his daycare center only to find that the center has absolutely no idea where he’s gone. Molly is at a loss, especially since Danny’s father abandoned her the day Danny was born and never showed any interest in him. And although the daycare center is run-down, and unruly kids are locked in a basement, the workers hardly seem kidnapping suspects. Detective Lou Tripoli, assigned to the case, is quickly at a loss for leads, and hope for Danny fades—though not before a desperate romance blossoms between distraught Molly and gruff but caring Tripoli. Then seven months later, Danny walks back into his mother’s trailer as coolly as he apparently walked out of the daycare center. He looks healthy and well, though refusing to say where he’s been or with whom. And it isn’t long before Molly notices great changes in him. He wants to be called “Daniel,” is disgusted by meat, hates fishing—previously his favorite hobby—is remarkably attuned to weather cycles, is sickened by any type of chemical smell, and has preternatural reading and comprehension abilities. Bit by bit, Tripoli and Molly divine that he must have lived with some bearded hermit who taught him the ways of the land, and now, back in the industrialized world, he has the aura of some sort of eco-Christ with a message. Soon, news of Daniel spreads and penitents flock—even as the weather turns radically for the worse. Lieberman (Baby, 1981, etc.) hits all the right environmental notes here, and there’s an ample amount of mystery, but his characters are never developed much beyond their reactions to Daniel—himself a cipher given to pronouncements like “Now they’re destroying our Earth.”

Intriguing, but more a mission statement than a novel.