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The Missing Pieces
This story is about severe trauma and a woman's struggle to survive the aftermath. After 20 years of prison, Bobby is granted her freedom. With no recollection of her past and the events that led to her incarceration, she sets off to build a life for herself. Alone in the world, she cautiously tries to integrate back into society. As she goes about her new daily life, the pieces of her past start exploding around her. Nightmares, flashbacks, and people she meets connect her to fragments of a frightening life before prison. With the knowledge that Bobby suffers from PTSD, her new friends try to help her put the missing pieces of her life back together.
608 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 3, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 17, 2019
I won this as a goodreads giveaway. Ok....so this book started out pretty good. I was interested in what was going on, and it seemed to be moving along ok. The dialogue and interaction was a little awkward, but new writers always get a pass on that, cuz it has to be a hard thing to figure out. Then it started to get a bit graphically disturbing in a childhood memory type way, and that’s not really my kind of book. But I kept reading because I felt like I wanted to give it a fair go, since it was a giveaway. Then it started getting a little confusing. It seemed to start to jump back and forth between three timelines without really giving any clues as to when or why. You would all of a sudden just be in a completely different place and time. Then it got SUPER confusing, and I was just completely lost. I checked to see where I was at and how close to finishing I was, and I was only about halfway through the book. I couldn’t finish it. I wouldn’t recommend this book.
April 5, 2026
I finished The Missing Pieces on a Tuesday night somewhere around 2 a.m., and I sat with it in my hands for a long time afterward. That doesn't happen often anymore — not after twenty-something years of reading and reviewing. Deborah Henderson did something to me with this book, and I'm still not entirely sure how.
Bobby is one of the most quietly devastating characters I've encountered in recent fiction. There's something almost unbearable about watching a woman walk out of prison after two decades with no memory of why she went in. Henderson doesn't play this for cheap drama. She lets Bobby exist in her confusion with a kind of raw, patient dignity — fumbling through grocery stores, learning how to sleep in a room with a door that locks from the inside, flinching at things the reader slowly begins to understand before Bobby does. The dramatic irony here is handled with a surgical restraint that lesser writers would have squandered.
What Henderson gets absolutely right — and this is where the book distinguishes itself from other trauma narratives — is the texture of PTSD. The flashbacks don't arrive conveniently. They ambush Bobby mid-sentence, mid-breath, mid-cup of coffee. I've read novels that treat trauma like a plot device. Henderson treats it like weather. It's just there, atmospheric and unpredictable, shaping everything without announcing itself.
The supporting cast the new friends who quietly orbit Bobby and try to help her reconstruct a life are written with genuine warmth and no sentimentality. They're flawed in ordinary ways. They don't always say the right thing. One character in particular, whose patience with Bobby borders on saintly, has a private grief of her own that Henderson only ever lets us see sideways. I loved that choice. It reminded me that everyone in the room is carrying something.
My single hesitation is that the middle section loses momentum in places — there are passages where Henderson seems reluctant to push Bobby into the darkness the story is clearly building toward. I understand that impulse; Bobby is a character you want to protect. But the novel earns its most powerful moments precisely when it refuses to look away.
By the final act, I was holding my breath. The pieces come together in a way that is both inevitable and genuinely shocking — not a thriller's shock, but the quieter, sadder shock of recognition. Oh, you think. Of course. How did I not see that?
The Missing Pieces is a book about survival written by someone who clearly understands that surviving is not the same as being saved. Henderson has written something urgent and humane. Read it slowly. It deserves that.
Bobby is one of the most quietly devastating characters I've encountered in recent fiction. There's something almost unbearable about watching a woman walk out of prison after two decades with no memory of why she went in. Henderson doesn't play this for cheap drama. She lets Bobby exist in her confusion with a kind of raw, patient dignity — fumbling through grocery stores, learning how to sleep in a room with a door that locks from the inside, flinching at things the reader slowly begins to understand before Bobby does. The dramatic irony here is handled with a surgical restraint that lesser writers would have squandered.
What Henderson gets absolutely right — and this is where the book distinguishes itself from other trauma narratives — is the texture of PTSD. The flashbacks don't arrive conveniently. They ambush Bobby mid-sentence, mid-breath, mid-cup of coffee. I've read novels that treat trauma like a plot device. Henderson treats it like weather. It's just there, atmospheric and unpredictable, shaping everything without announcing itself.
The supporting cast the new friends who quietly orbit Bobby and try to help her reconstruct a life are written with genuine warmth and no sentimentality. They're flawed in ordinary ways. They don't always say the right thing. One character in particular, whose patience with Bobby borders on saintly, has a private grief of her own that Henderson only ever lets us see sideways. I loved that choice. It reminded me that everyone in the room is carrying something.
My single hesitation is that the middle section loses momentum in places — there are passages where Henderson seems reluctant to push Bobby into the darkness the story is clearly building toward. I understand that impulse; Bobby is a character you want to protect. But the novel earns its most powerful moments precisely when it refuses to look away.
By the final act, I was holding my breath. The pieces come together in a way that is both inevitable and genuinely shocking — not a thriller's shock, but the quieter, sadder shock of recognition. Oh, you think. Of course. How did I not see that?
The Missing Pieces is a book about survival written by someone who clearly understands that surviving is not the same as being saved. Henderson has written something urgent and humane. Read it slowly. It deserves that.
November 29, 2021
audible:I enjoyed this book.The story was well written.The mind is amazing in how it protects us.PTSD is real.Bobby has it to a severe degree,she has memory loss that threatens her life because someone is after her. Heidi Bindhammer was a fine narrator.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
May 1, 2020
I won this book from Goodreads.
Kept me interested throughout the whole story. I liked how everything was brought together to make sense. Very detailed descriptions of feelings and scenes made it more interesting to read.
Kept me interested throughout the whole story. I liked how everything was brought together to make sense. Very detailed descriptions of feelings and scenes made it more interesting to read.
October 18, 2019
I received this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.
November 15, 2020
The book was recommended to me, so I started reading it. It was a bit confusing at first with the switching of timelines but understandable after a while. Really enjoyed the casual writing style which made it an easy read. Before I knew it it was done.
November 23, 2021
Truly a terrifying situation to be in. I was hooked on this book from the first page!
I feel a sense of pity for Bobby as she tried to put the pieces of her life back together day by day and yet she shows such mental strength throughout her journey. I highly recommend!
I feel a sense of pity for Bobby as she tried to put the pieces of her life back together day by day and yet she shows such mental strength throughout her journey. I highly recommend!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews