Boy Still Missing - Hardcover

Searles, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688175708 ISBN 13: 9780688175702

Publisher: William Morrow, 2001

Synopsis

Boy Still Missing

It is June 1971 and Dominick Pindle, a tenderhearted but aimless Massachusetts teenager, spends his nights driving around with his mother and dragging his wayward father out of bars. Late one evening Dominick's search puts him face-to-face with his father's seductive mistress, Edie Kramer. Instantly in lust, he begins a forbidden relationship with this beautiful, mysterious woman. Before long, though, their erotic entanglement leads to a shocking death, and Dominick discovers that the mother he betrayed had secrets as dark and destructive as his own.

Rapt with confusion and guilt as the startling facts about his family begin to emerge, Dominick heads to New York City in search of retribution and the truth about his mother's disquieting past. He soon finds refuge with Jeanny Garvey, a young, soulful idealist who might save him from his dire fate, but not before he makes a desperate choice that endangers everything he holds clear -- and puts both their lives at risk.

Charged with the exhilarating narrative pace of a thriller and set during a complicated and explosive era, Boy Still Missing is a stunning debut novel. It renders a deeply affecting portrait of a boy whose passage into adulthood proves as complex and impassioned as the history that unfolds before his eyes.

About this title

About the Author

John Searles is the author of the best-selling novels Boy Still Missing and Strange But True. John appears regularly as a book critic on NBC's Today Show. He has also appeared on CBS's The Early Show, Live! with Regis & Kelly and CNN to discuss his favorite book selections. He is is the Editor-at-Large of Cosmopolitan. His essays have been appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Beast and other national publications. He lives in New York City and can be found on twitter @searlesbooks.

It is June 1971 and Dominick Pindle, a tenderhearted but aimless Massachusetts teenager, spends his nights driving around with his mother and dragging his wayward father out of bars. Late one evening Dominick's search puts him face-to-face with his father's seductive mistress, Edie Kramer. Instantly in lust, he begins a forbidden relationship with this beautiful, mysterious woman. Before long, though, their erotic entanglement leads to a shocking death, and Dominick discovers that the mother he betrayed had secrets as dark and destructive as his own.

Rapt with confusion and guilt as the startling facts about his family begin to emerge, Dominick heads to New York City in search of retribution and the truth about his mother's disquieting past. He soon finds refuge with Jeanny Garvey, a young, soulful idealist who might save him from his dire fate, but not before he makes a desperate choice that endangers everything he holds clear -- and puts both their lives at risk.

Charged with the exhilarating narrative pace of a thriller and set during a complicated and explosive era, Boy Still Missing is a stunning debut novel. It renders a deeply affecting portrait of a boy whose passage into adulthood proves as complex and impassioned as the history that unfolds before his eyes.

Reviews

"If only I could have stopped the most important person in my life from dying... alone." This much-anticipated first novel from Searles (book editor at Cosmopolitan) is a vivid blue-collar coming-of-age story with more than the usual supply of plot twists: abductions, abortion, adoption, alcoholism, media frenzies and extramarital affairs contribute first vim, then tragedy, to the 16th year in the life of Dominick Pindle. Searles's tale opens in 1971, in a "desolate, middle-of-nowhere" New England town, where narrator Dominick and his determinedly sunny mother spend Saturday nights trawling bars in search of his wayward father. When Dominick spots his dad's truck outside sexy divorc‚e Edie Kramer's house, it's the start of a fateful relationship. Edie is pregnant by Dominick's father, who's no longer seeing her; hurting for money, Edie convinces Dominick to steal his mother's hidden cash and give it to her. But Dominick's mom is also secretly pregnant (by the town sheriff). Without the money she had salted away, she can't afford a safe illegal abortion and bleeds to death in a motel room after trying to terminate her pregnancy herself. The next day, Dominick leaves for New York City in search of facts about his mother and his mysterious half-brother. After a number of hairpin turns, intrigue and reconciliations, the book's climactic section finds Dominick and his new girlfriend Jeanny holed up in a motel room with Edie's baby in a desperate attempt to get the media to investigate his mother's death. Like Russell Banks, Searles combines a rapid and intricate plot with major social concerns. Some readers will find Searles heavy-handed in his depiction of the pre-Roe politics of abortion; many more, though, will find his story of hard choices, bleak times and unwilling kidnappers captivating indeed.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

It is bad enough that Dominic Pindle's mother has to search through Holedo's bars for her husband with adolescent Dominic in tow. But when Dominic is sent into the house of his father's mistress to bring the Old Man home, Pindle the Younger becomes romantically entwined with Edie as well. Wooed by her experience, her sensuality, and by a destructive need to relive the sins of his father, Dominic betrays his mother. When tragedy befalls the family, Dominic sets out for New York City to find his long-lost half-brother and alleviate his intense sense of responsibility for the destruction of the Pindle family. Dominic must finally choose whether to continue repeating the past misdeeds of his parents or to try and break free of his ancestral hopelessness. Searles builds suspense and excitement with surprising turns of plot weaving back into one another, and while many of the secondary characters lack depth, Dominic Pindle will resonate with readers, especially the innumerable boys still missing. A promising debut for the clearly talented Searles. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

In his first novel, an overly complicated coming-of-age story, Searles, the senior books editor at Cosmopolitan, has studded his plot with all the issues the market might be expected to bear: adultery, abortion, abduction, adoption, and alcoholism. In 1971, 15-year-old Dominick Pindle and his mother search the bars of their working-class Massachusetts town for Dominick's father, whose drinking and womanizing are legendary. When Dominick falls in love with his father's sexy (and pregnant) girlfriend, Edie, he steals the money his mother has been saving to buy a house in order to help Edie out. Meanwhile, Dominick's mother, who is also pregnant, dies alone in a motel room while trying to give herself an abortion. Dominick becomes determined to track down Edie (who has moved to New York) and also to discover the truth about his mother's past. The book ends as it begins, in a flurry of unconvincing events, with Dominick; his girlfriend, Jenny; and Edie's baby daughter Sophie locked in a motel room, trying to get the media to investigate his mother's death. Perfectly appropriate for larger fiction collections in public libraries but nothing special.
- Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688175708
• ISBN 13: 9780688175702
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304