The Odd Sea: A Novel

by Frederick Reiken

“A haunting first novel that takes a horrifying family calamity and turns it into a form of magic.”— The New York Times

On a sunny spring morning, sixteen-year-old Ethan Shumway walks down his gravel driveway, turns the bend, and vanishes without a trace. As police search for clues, Ethan's devastated family and friends—from his parents and four siblings to the older woman who was more than a teacher to Ethan—grapple for answers in the teenager's enigmatic life. As this elusive mystery slowly weaves its way into the fabric of the family, Ethan's younger brother, Philip, becomes the last, most stubborn searcher of a boy caught between the power and fragility of youth, between the bonds and fissures of family, searching for understanding in the unbearable presence of loss.

Praise for The Odd Sea

“A powerful debut novel.” — People

“[An] extraordinarily good first novel . . . The story has a dark, dreamlike quality, and author Reiken tells it with no melodrama nor any word out of place.” — Time

“A luminous parable about growing up, about the necessity of dealing with inevitable loss and questions that cannot be answered . . . Reiken is a smoothly seductive storyteller. He has talent for telling but not telling, for revealing only enough information to whet our appetite.” — Newsday

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Family, Adult, Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Frederick Reiken is the author of Day For Night (2010), The Odd Sea (1998) and The Lost Legends of New Jersey (2000). His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker. He has worked as a reporter and columnist and is currently a member of the writing faculty at Emerson College.

Reviews

[Ron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mini rant about a “boobie” kind of book: How do you screw up a potentially poignant, heartbreaking novel? Here's a sure fire way: Add a woman character with big boobs, and mention them in scenes - a lot. Why exactly? I pondered (not the boobs), but it escaped me. She wears tight t-shirts. Gets caught in the rain, oopsie daisy. The adolescent boys stare (ok, I get that part). But come on already. Surprisingly, this person was not depicted as a bimbo, but oh she wins first place at the weirdo contest. Other attributes to list on a dating site: 40 yr old pedophile, habitual cheater, artist with a propensity for nudes. Dream girl anyone?

Half way through the book she had moved out of state. Yay! I was so pumped. Damnit, she's back for a visit. Double damnit, she brought her boobs with her. Arrgh!!

Anyway, two stars to match the number of you-know-what. One pat on the back for finishing the book. Subtract pat after remembering I paid money for said book. In truth, the rest of the story wasn't all that bad, and so easily corrected. Obviously, the sexism does not fit in today's world, and probably didn't 20 years ago.

Phew! Glad to get that off my chest. Ba-dum ching!

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short but powerful story that won the Hackney Literary Award for a first novel. There's a quiet earnestness in Frederick Reiken's writing that I find very appealing. I see some similarity with Brad Kessler's work in the way Reiken's characters use art, music, literature, and love of nature to soothe their grieving hearts.

Two things about this book stay with me. First is the way the Shumway family members support and encourage each other throughout the ordeal rather than having it destroy the family. When Dad takes up timber framing (and chisel collecting...go figure) to fill his empty spaces, Halley and Philip secretly make fun of him. But they love him, so they feign interest in his work and then discover a genuine interest in the craft, and treasure the time it gives them with their dad.

The second thing that stays with me is the huge difference between losing a person to death and losing a person to disappearance. When someone dies, you know they're never coming back. You grieve and move on. When someone just vanishes, it's hard to extinguish that flame of hope, however tiny, that they're still alive. Philip, the young narrator, imagines elaborate scenarios that feature Ethan waltzing back into their lives someday. Without a body to grieve over, he can't quite let go of his big brother. As the years go by, he has to learn to live with the mysteries and honor the memories. (4.5 stars)

[Carmen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book about a boy of 16 named Ethan who just disappears one day. He just mysteriously vanishes and no one has any clue why. This concept sounds more interesting than it actually is. Not much happens in this book. It is told from the point of view of Ethan's younger brother Philip. Even though it is mildly interesting to see how Ethan's many siblings, parents and ex-girlfriends deal with his unexpected vanishing, the book doesn't really go anywhere or have a solid storyline. Nothing really gets resolved. There is a whole subplot about the father getting into 'timber-frame construction' which I found very boring. I would not recommend this novel.

[Megan Fritz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Odd Sea is a book that I never would have heard of, let alone read, if it wasn't for the fact that I got it for free from a local college professor that was unloading hundreds of books in order to move across the country.
Written by a local author, The Odd Sea takes place in rural Western Massachusetts. It follows Philip, whose older brother Ethan disappears one summer morning. In a span of right around 200 pages, several years are covered, but this is not a fast paced story. It wanders and meanders down the country lanes of "Hilltowns". If you're looking for a thriller and shocking twist ending, this isn't the book for you. However, if you fancy beautifully written sentences, character development, and wonder- check this one out.

[Cortnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I'm. I'm so confused? And also dissatisfied? The book was good but at the same time the ending left me with countless, niggling questions. It drives me INSANE, that there's no proper explanation. This book made me feel so many things. The only reason my rating isn't any higher is because I'm honestly left so speechless that it's frustrating, but in a good way.

If you're in for a mystery that never actually gets properly solved, this is definitely the kind of book for you.

[Chy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The main reason I rated this five stars is because I think it's amazing that I have spent the two days since I've read it swinging violently between wanting to give it one star, and wanting to give it five, thinking of giving it three just as an average, or giving up and just leaving it unrated. I mean, waffling about a rating is something I do, but not like this.

If a book has me thinking about it this much, my opinion of it swinging so crazily from one extreme to the other, my feelings so engaged for days afterwards (even if half of them were negative feelings), well, that's pretty damn amazing.

And there are amazing things about it beyond that. While I was reading, I was engrossed. Some solid truth came out in the way the narrator did things, in familial interactions and tragedies. I realized close to halfway through that part of that feeling came from the fact that it was reminding me of David Sedaris's essays. Hell, our narrator even has a brash older sister named Amy.

And the want, at times, to give it one star were so severe because when I remembered the elements that turned me off, I hated them beyond what they really deserved, all because they destroyed the magic. The details of putting together timber-frame buildings was the main one. It just feels way too contrived again and again, in spite of some of the entertaining things it brings about.

I also got all disproportionately mad that the kid who disappeared wasn't the vanilla teenager I had started the story thinking he was. It trickles in that he's great at sports, and that he's a gifted musician. And yet, I loved some of the ways the music thing played out---especially that the brother heard stolen Van Halen riffs in his big classical guitar piece. That's awesome, and believable.

Little touches like that completed the spell, but then some weird-feeling thing would pop up and I'd be all mad that it put the spell off-kilter again. It was a really weird reading experience.

It made me wish there were a couple of sequels---in a speculative fiction genre.

I felt like there were a lot of hints to one particular thing, as far as "What happened to Ethan?" went. To me, it seemed obvious, and I kept waiting for the other characters to catch on. I won't spoil it and tell you if I was right or not---or even what I was so sure happened to him.

The most magical thing about this book was personal, though. I finished reading another book and sat down before my "to read" bookcase and looked up at my choices, waiting for one of them to speak to me. They didn't, so I was pulling them down one-at-a-time and reading the back covers. I had forgotten about the tower of to-reads stacked against the bookcase to my left until I felt a tug in that direction. I had forgotten this book, but it was in that stack, softly pinging.

I plucked it out and set it on top, confused because I'd meant to pick it up and take off reading it. But the "ping" was saying, "Not quite yet."

And then that night I wrote a journal entry about my high school art teacher and how, when I feel like I'm doing my best writing, I'm following the tenets he taught me about drawing and oil-painting. And it was based on the ideal that...art is art.

Once I was done writing that, the book said, "Okay, now."

And it fit. It even made me think, "Damn, I should have typed my journal entry and posted it before I read the book, just so I'd have some dated and verifiable way to prove I wrote it before I read this."

And that was another (big) reason I settled on giving it five stars.

[Sara the Librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This small literary triumph written by an author no one has ever heard of when I bring it up has been in my top five best modern novels list since I first read it years ago. And I read a lot people.

I quote the New York Times review a lot when I try to explain how good this book is.

"A haunting first novel that takes a horrifying family calamity and turns it into a form of magic."

One quiet summer day 15 year old Ethan Shumway disappears. In the days, months, and years that follow the reader follows his family, through the eyes of Ethan's younger brother Philip struggle, survive and ultimately live with the worst nightmare any family could be confronted with.

That's it.

There's no real mystery here, the book is NOT about what happened to Ethan or why he vanished or how his abductors paid the price. Its about loss and learning how to go on when your questions don't have any answers and there is no closure.

Fredrick Reiken, one of the single most gifted writer's out there today and oh god how I wish he were more prolific, chose well in his protagonist, the budding writer Philip. Awkward, desperately lonely without his beloved older brother, and struggling to find a way to make sense of what is happening around him Philip becomes obsessed with finding clues to his brother's disappearance and its his journey toward accepting not only Ethan's loss but the not knowing what has happened to him that is the crux of Reiken's tale.

Reiken's supporting players, the Shumway family, Ethan's mentor the crazy leader of an artist community, and his beloved girlfriend are all wonderful grey people with terrible tempers and talent and emotions who populate a world that any reader will be at home in.

The Shumway family falls apart, rebuilds and even finds happiness again after the loss of their eldest son and Philip himself finds his way out of the forest of his grief and confusion towards a kind of acceptance with life and all its unfairness. He will spend the rest of his life "not looking" for Ethan, of this the reader is sure, but he will find the space to live his own as well.

[Kjsbreda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novela is about a boy struggling to process his own grief and the grief of his family members over the disappearance of his older brother. The book spans five years of the young boy's life, from age thirteen through the summer following his senior year in high school. The book is a bildungsroman of sorts -- the boy's grief both compels him to relentlessly seek out an explanation for his brother's disappearance and to write about his brother. In the process, he discovers that he is a writer. He considers theories that his brother may have run away, have been the victim of a serial killer, or been the dragged off by a wild animal. All the while, he misses his brother desperately. This is evident from the first few pages of the book, where the narrator looks back to one winter day a few years before his brother's disappearance where the two of them skated for miles and hours on the frozen Westfield River until the final paragraph where he considers with both admiration and envy one last theory to explain his brother's absence. Almost every thought is somehow connected to the missing brother who is the most developed and fleshed-out character in the book, in spite of the fact that he is missing.

Some of the other reviewers have complained about the boy's fixation on the female body. I found that the narrator's voice was remarkably true to that of an emotionally sensitive, observant young man in his teens. If anything, the narrator was more detached from that sort of thing than the typical high school age boy.

[Allison Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book countless times since high school; it's one of my top three favorite books. Ethan Shumway is sixteen when he disappears - literally disappears: his younger brother, Philip, sees Ethan at the end of the driveway one minute, then he's gone. The book is Philip's searching for (or "not-finding", as he calls it) Ethan. There is something about Reiken's writing that makes the whole story vague and mysterious, yet complete enough to be satisfying, regardless of what the resolution may be.

[Julie Akeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book about a tragic loss and how a family moved on. It has a fascinating story for the title of the book that sounds odd in itself till you know the reference and it's literary brilliance right there. A touching and moving book about dealing with all kinds of tragedies of trying to raise children and the severe wounds it leaves when one doesn't make it. Each survivor had to find a way to cope, to move on and to find meaning in the breaking of what once was whole. Things are never the same, but it affirms there is life after loss.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Odd Sea seems to be Frederick Reiken's somewhat autobiographical debut novel that he published in 1988. With elegant prose, we meet the Shumway family, living in upstate New York as described by Philip, second from the youngest in a family of five, getting through the early years of high school. One late spring morning, Philip's older, sixteen-year-old brother, Ethan walks down the driveway and vanishes without a trace. A gifted athlete and musician, beloved by many, Ethan's disappearance becomes the focal point of a family thrown into turmoil for years to follow. Philip's three sisters all deal with Ethan's disappearance differently, as do his parents. Also in the mix is Ethan's girlfriend, Melissa, and Victoria, Ethan's teacher and mentor, and self-described bad girl, an artist and nearly 15 years older than Ethan.

While the remaining years of Philip's high school journey remain focused on Ethan, and in fact his entire coming-of-age falls under Ethan's shadow, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, as college and adulthood loom. Reiken does a great job charting the course of a young man's teen years, a journey toward creativity, and the treacherous navigation of something so terrible and so amorphous. I was particularly taken by Philip's relationship with his sister Halley, just one year older than him; and the closeness they shared. It was fun going back to the debut novel of an author whose 2010 work, Day for Night I enjoyed so much when it was first released.

[Sandra Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I go on and on about this novel, let me share that when 2020 hit us all, I could not focus on reading novels (or much of anything). This is the first novel since then that I could not put down. Secondly, I always love a story told by a child because you get the “truth.”

The writing in this novel is beautiful in a forthright way. Yes, there are lines that make you pause, make you re-read them and ponder. Here’s my favorite, when Phillip speaks of his father: “He loved those hand-held tools with the profound tenderness of a poet. We loved our father for the poet he’d become.” The author, in this story, has enlightened us all in the art and science of timber framing.

This tale is full of suspense throughout and takes unexpected turns when least expected. Throughout, the story goes deep into a Phillip's heart and struggles, and the author has drawn the characters, including the boy’s siblings, so we know their differences, who they are. Mr. Reiken has shown such a subtle courage in the narrator, makes the reader want to reach out and comfort him. The boy's relentless in both the search of his missing brother as well as in his search for understanding and substance. And, there's the "gifts" from the women, Tori and Melissa, in his brother's life ... where they share the grace in both his brother's presence and absence.

No spoilers here, but I did love how the title came to be. Even the few mystical moments were so subtle in moving our hearts, bringing us into the moment as we read the words. This book if full of wonder and mystery, and I look forward to reading more of this author’s work.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

So aptly named, this book kept me feeling off-kilter and a little bit scared. The title is a play on The Odyssey, and also refers to a metaphor the narrator develops, for a place where things go when they disappear. I happened upon this book, deciding to read it because it takes place where I live. And the sense of place in this book is luminous and spot on. Also just realized this author wrote a mind-blowing article about fiction called The Author-Narrator-Character Merge, that I read about 5 years ago and still remember.

[Yuuto · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this book up at a used bookstore, thinking the summary sounded interested, and thinking that it would be more of a mystery than it was. Instead, it was an excessively dull book that was all over the place. The mystery went unsolved, various female characters had the existence of their boobs mentioned an excessive amount of times, and it was honestly a chore to finish.

[Sally Fouhse · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book. I liked it, mostly, but there a couple of left turns that didn’t really fit. One was the late introduction of extremely detailed woodworking tasks and tools. It’s like the author is a woodworker and just had to get that “write what you know “ bit into the book.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super fast read. But sucked me in and I really liked it.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly moving and captivating story. A page turner centered around a tragically sad event.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sad read about a young man who disappears and how it affects his family, especially his younger brother.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Odd Sea is the story of a young boy named Ethan who vanishes from a small western Massachusetts town. That's how it starts, anyway.

Despite the cliche of 'lost kid story' and the blatant reference to the Odyssey, cracking the first few pages pretty much means commitment to reading the entire work in one or two sittings. The story is addictive, both for its maintained tensions and its ability to create meaningful relationships amongst characters. Most of these tensions and relationships are focused around Ethan's brother.

Ethan's brother is cast as the story's narrator. He searches his own life for traces of his brother. This develops into a haunting feeling that Ethan may have left more than just a hole in his family. With his disappearance, it seems there is a hole in the world.

The clarity and beauty of the writing only embellishes a well told story further. The voice of the narrator is dead on and the description remains centered. The wrong turn this story could have taken into melodrama-land is expertly avoided by talking about more than just a kid who disappears. Issues on maturity, person darkness, loss and the approach to art are all well addressed.

At the least, the story is a good drama-suspense. At the most, its a dissertation on absence and Nothing. It also avoids the pitfalls of a genre rife with absolute trash.

There are a few flaws. You might really need to squint but one or two plot holes crop up. The book's tension does droop a bit in the middle, partially due to recurring events centered around Ethan's mother. Luckily this stops just short of getting annoying. The concluding chapter also changes in pace. While it doesn't seem hastily written, it can shake the reader a bit. Still, these flaws are minor and really didn't hurt my experience much.

This one gets a four. High marks!

Read it.

[C.B. Wentworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

When sixteen-year-old Ethan Shumway walks down the driveway towards Baker's Bottom Pond, no one in his family could have known it would be the last time they'd ever see him. Both tragic and resilient, The Odd Sea follows the story of a family coping with the sudden loss of a son and brother.

Ethan's younger brother Philip watches helplessly as his mother descends into manic depression and his father throws himself into manual labor as a means to deal with his grief. Meanwhile, Philip's sisters deal with loss in polar opposite ways. The eldest relies on anger and avoidance, while the younger latches onto to Philip.

Philip's naïve hope of finding his brother plays out as he spends his free time searching the woods and Ethan's favorite places. He hangs out with Ethan's girlfriend and reads his diary for any clues that might lead to where his brother is hiding. As Philip gets older, his search changes shape as he realizes the possibility that Ethan could be dead. He never truly accepts that reality, but he learns there is a delicate balance between hope and the truth.

The emotional journey of loss deepens with each passing year as the hole of Ethan's absence never really closes. While Philip and his family find different ways of living with their grief, all find comfort in the love they have for each other.

Frederick Reiken explores the impact of a missing person with so much intensity, Ethan's disappearance becomes a personal experience. He makes solid choices in imagery that beautifully reflect the emotional conflict between grief, frustration, and guilt from needing to move forward. Subtle and simplistic, Reiken's writing allows a highly charged story to flow naturally without turning into something melodramatic and unbelievable. This careful sense of storytelling is what makes an unconventional ending work in such a beautiful and realistic way.

[Justin Pahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first read this book, it got 5 stars. And the first half of it is still brilliant. The premise is one that will make writers dream: a 16 year old prodigy goes missing; his family tries to find him and grapples with his absence; it's all narrated by his slightly younger, slightly less remarkable, slightly jealous brother. And I admire how quiet Reiken makes all of it. Many writers would lean into the melodrama or the sentiment, and yet Reiken barely breaks a sweat. Everything is observed with a cool, clinical detachment. And it works, at first. The details themselves are heartbreaking, without any embellishment: the mother's late night baking, the father's obsession with timber framing. But about halfway through, the book sort of stalls out; it becomes too quiet. I admire Reiken's decision to avoid any big reveals or moments, but it means that the final half of the book just drifts, covering the same emotional and psychic terrain as the first half. The book also suffers from what I'd term "first novel syndrome," which is a (white, straight, male) narrator who is sympathetic but not terribly interesting. Philip is a keen observer, but we don't learn much about his internal life. His relationships with his brother's exes - Melissa and Victoria - occupy much of the book's second half, but their arcs are so similar that they contribute to the sense of stasis that overtakes the novel.

Still, there is incredible beauty here. Victoria is a magnificent, complex character - the kind of unlikable yet unapologetic woman that so few male writers invent. And as in his superior second novel, "The Lost Legends of New Jersey," Reiken does a masterful job bring a specific geography - this time, rural Massachusetts - vividly to life. The prose throughout is precise and constrained. The book might have been slightly better if it had, at times, been less constrained.

[Eva Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this book in about 2-3 hours. It was a very quick read. It was not all that the book jacket promised, but it had its moments. I was annoyed that they never found out what happened to Ethan. That may be realistic, but that's *always* the ending in these missing people plots (unless it's explicitly a mystery novel) and it's so unsatisfying and has a hollow ring of intellectual dishonesty, like it would have cost the author too much to come up with something that would blend into the weave of the rest of the story. And I think it would have been interesting to read about the various characters reactions to finding Ethan's body (or whatever would be found).
I think what I gravitated to most in the story was the sexual relationships from the point of view of the women. I could identify with them both, while feeling an ache for the one and a feeling of relief from knowing the dark angel existed and someone had come to terms with it. And it also made me pissed off at Ethan. But I guess part of the point is, he never got to be a man and grow or reflect or change anything he was doing or had done. And everyone had to come to terms with that.
On a more personal note, I found it annoying to read about Western Massachusetts. So much of my life happened there and I couldn't escape my own associations with the place. And, I would like to know why the mother's stomach had to be pumped after 4 Valium, unless she downed the whole bottle of vodka with them, since that's not anywhere near a toxic dose, says the medical student/psych resident.
Read it if you want to. If nothing else, you won't waste a significant part of your life if you end up getting nothing out of it.

[Mahala Helf · Rating 1 out of 5]

How can such a short book seem so wordy and redundant?
Part of it that most of the female characters besides the parents, whether past forty or under 20 are similarly mystified as arch and spout what's meant to seem deep and meaningful, but sounds as overblown and/or oversimplified as the meant to be unreliable teenage to college grad narrator. The narration as well is MEANINGFUL.
Another reason is that the hints & teases and conclusions are endlessly repeated. You can see the scaffolding of the outline so clearly it's almost like a workshop exercise.
If you like didactic prose/logic like this(typical, not worst of novel) you will enjoy The Odd Sea, which could have/should have been titled The Ill Lad. This is supposed to be the thoughts of a 14 or 15 year old as retold & endorsed by his college grad self:
"And always, while watching him, I would sense that he was lost. Lost in the grain of each beam he shaped. Lost within his own sea of longing and despair. He'd swing his axe with fervent strokes, as if carving each log a soul. Then it made sense to me, finally, that Ethan possessed such poise when he played guitar. It made sense that Amy saw things with such penetrating vision, that Dana's intuition could seem practically clairvoyant, because my father struck those logs with a strange, emotionally driven grace, a compassionate equilibrium, which I knew he could not have learned or understood."

[Dalton Oligschlaeger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was pretty well heartbreaking. It covers the story of an innocent child, who awakes one day to basically watch his brother dissappear around a corner before his eyes. Him and his family have no clues, no lead, and no idea. All they have is his music school and teacher and friends he had there, some of which end up being much more involved than the family would have ever guessed. The book isn't usually vivid and sometimes, details are sometimes spared, but it's hard to put down, simply because the reader imagines themselves as a child, who lost the one person they looked up to, their older sibling, and has no idea to what, or to whom. Through his searches, Philip, the younger brother becomes closer to not only Ethan's, the missing person's, music teacher, but to his brother's girlfriend, and to his own family, and they all search for an answer to the dissappearance of the person they all loved and cherished. It was almost tear jerkting at times to follow Philip on his journey for Ethan, never knowing if he'll find him tomorrow, or if the body, the soul, of his beloved brother has ceased to exist. The only reason this book didn't receive a "5" rating from me, was because, due to its short length, there were details here and there that could have been added to make the story even better.

[Lindsey Gustad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had intended this to be my purse book - the book you read in little five minute increments in waiting rooms when you aren't allowed to use your cell phone. It didn't seem very interesting and I thought it would take months to get through it. But then it got interesting so it stopped being my purse book and became just a regular book, and I finished it in a couple of days.

The Odd Sea follows a family after the disappearance of one of their children. The story is told by the younger brother, who is around ten at the beginning of the book and around seventeen when it ends. Through his eyes, we see the ripples of loss throughout the community - the effect on the parents and other siblings and their relationships with each other, then friends and teachers. The narrator is obsessed with finding his brother, and ends up uncovering a lot of secrets in the process. This isn't a mystery book - it's an exploration of grief and the weird things people do to try to deal with it. The details were interesting. Reiken paints a clear picture of the messy relationships in life and the way that people never quite respond to each other correctly. There's always a gap in communication, and grief makes it wider.

I didn't love this book. I don't plan on reading it again and I don't necessarily recommend it. Still, if you are interested in the topic you might enjoy it.

[Shalonne Halstead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was hesitant to start reading this book because it involves a missing child - as a mother, that's one of my worst nightmares. But something about the cover drew me in, and I gave it a shot. I'm glad I did!

It's told from the POV of the missing boy's brother who seems to be a naive, innocent type of boy. His teenage brother goes missing inexplicably one day. Just...gone. The book is about how the rest of the family copes and survives this horrible tragedy.

This book belongs to that class of books where the author has either acquired a great deal of book knowledge or a lot of interesting lifetime experiences that allowed him to create characters of amazing depth and interest. Each was unique, from the way they acted, to their hobbies and activities. He captured the feel of a Western MA town well, and even though I'm three hours to the east in RI, I recognized New Englanders right away.

One of the reviews on the back mentioned there was not a word out of place. I agree! The only problem is now I want an open frame timber house...

[Ashley MYeRS]

i didn't like this book because you never found out where Ethan was. i wish that the book could have told you more about where Ethan is other than the assumption of his family because when i was reading this book i felt like i didn't understand the moral of the story. if i where the author i would have thought of a more creative way to end the story because i think that there where a lot of unanswered questions such as: what ever happened to Ethan? how long has he been missing? did he even make it to the lake he was going to ? the main character is Philip because he is looking for his brother and is the only one help on to his little bit of hope even after it was a long time after Ethan's disappearance

[Adrianna Cooper · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate when people say “I wanted to like this book but.....”. However, here I am. The year in which this book takes place is unclear. I’m hoping it’s the 60s otherwise this book doesn’t make sense. This book goes on to be told by a boy, clearing dealing with the disappearance of his brother, but while going through puberty himself. He’s obsessed with boobs and doesn’t even mind “necking” with his girlfriend, in his sister’s car, while she’s necking with her boyfriend. And he ends it with, “in the end we know we needed to be together (his sister and him) so we didn’t mind this.

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳

I stopped at page 60. I don’t want to read about boobs and necking with your sister, even if your not actually doing it with her.

[Neeva Raymond · Rating 1 out of 5]

So I picked this book up thinking it’d be more like a mystery book. I was mistaken.

The concept was there, but the execution was just... bad. I at least have this an extra star just for the thought. But I docked it the other 3 stars for the actual story itself.

I hated pretty much everyone. They all had such complex personality’s and as much as I love a complex character, this is just not it.

Ok and I also thought that the relationship between Ethan and Victoria was weird. I thought that she was only like 7 years older than him, and it turned out to be like 15. When she said something about her being 41 a couple of years ago, my jaw fell to the ground.

So, as I said, the story could have been so much better than it was.

Much love and have fun reading :)

[Elisabeth Zguta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very interested in this story since I grew up in the area it took place, and in the same time frame that this story talks about. The writer brought forth some good characters, the thoughts and feelings of those touched by the loss and/or the abduction of his brother. No one knows of course how they will react when we lose a loved one, but the most frustrating aspect of the entire cast of characters was their inability to understand and make peace with 'not knowing' what happened. The artists to some may seem bizarre, but truly these types do wander about the hills in Massachusetts, trying to find their muse. I liked the story - and the fresh way it was told.