Returning again to the theme of working-class people and their wrenching concerns, Songs for the Missing begins with the suspenseful pace of a thriller, following an Ohio community’s efforts to locate a young woman who has gone missing. It soon deepens into an affecting portrait of a family trying desperately to hold onto itself and the memory of a daughter whose return becomes increasingly unlikely. Stark and honest, this is an intimate account of what happens behind the headlines of a very American tragedy.
“Riveting . . . Songs for the Missing is an engaging and often excruciating read.” —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
“ O’Nan is on a kind of mission to restore a simple, true sense of humanity to the novel.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Songs for the Missing has a plot that is deceptively easy to summarize, but the book has a mood so subtle that only first-rate fiction can evoke it.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“O’Nan’s writing is undeniably skillful . . . The pacing is spotless.” —The Miami Herald
I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award: Longlist 2009
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