Synopsis:
Mimi Malone, forty, first grade teacher and jewelry designer––wife or a widow? 1995, St. Charles, Illinois, and Harold has been missing for two years. Jack McClosky, aging detective, tries his hand in the search and learns her secret sorrow. Mimi's three friends, Jan, Mary Beth, Link, lend support, but their own struggles distract them. Family––Alice, Grandma Tinker, not Mimi's grandmother by blood, Edie, Pops, Mimi's Car Washing brothers, Mickey and Teddy, gift Mimi with their dreams, wisdom, biases, irritation, and affection. And sometimes with hard cash. And then there's the Jewish priest, her counselor and confidant. When Mimi places the search in her own hands and travels across the country to Downieville, Idaho, she meets along the way, Henri, the friendly French waiter, red haired Suzy, a clairvoyant owner of a diner, picture possessing Melva and Ida, sisters and innkeepers of The Honey Bears Bed and Breakfast, and huge Hank, the bartender at the Cattle Drive. All have their own stories and all lend pieces to the puzzle of Mimi's life. After returning to St. Charles, she meets Stephan-the-night-boy, a precocious nine year old and budding artist. God taketh away, but he also giveth. Mimi's life changes, but not the way she planned. Is she wife or widow? Or is she the woman in her painting, the ravaged runner? Mimi, it seems, is the real missing person. It is herself she must find in the end.
From the Inside Flap:
The human spirit cannot long abide the unknown and the uncertain. When the meaning of her own life has begun to be lost to her, a woman artist strikes out to find her husband dead or alive. Armed with an old photograph, dreams, and visions of her own and others, and possessing an intrepid, passionate spirit, she encounters as she journeys, her human Gatekeepers. The question she must finally answer is this: is happiness to be had in getting what one wants or wanting what one gets?
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