Life isn’t geometry, life-changing moments don’t happen predictably, at the bottom of a linear slope. Tragedies and accidents are tragic and accidental precisely because of their unexpectedness.
This book is beautiful, it grabbed my heart and wouldn’t stop crushing it. When fifty-year-old Adam Parson, father of a biracial Korean family living in Virginia goes missing on a ‘typical’ Tuesday morning, only one person holds the answers. That person is the youngest child in the family, fourteen-year-old Eugene, born with Autism and the genetic disorder Angelman syndrome, but a challenge to the case, Eugene cannot speak. His communication skills are complex. Father and son had hiked to nearby River Falls Park, but Eugene was later spotted all alone running in the middle of a country road, nearly getting hit by a car. Twin siblings, Mia (who narrates the novel) and John (interning 6 minutes from the house) are home from college, and Mia’s mind is elsewhere aching over a break-up with her boyfriend when her little brother makes it home alone. His reaction to her attempt at a hug leaves her floored and confused, too distracted to notice that her father, despite believing she hears his footsteps, never returns. It shames and shocks Mia that as intellectually gifted as she is, she failed (for hours) to notice her father’s absence. It is time to involve the police, no way on earth would their father, the caretaker of the family, fail to see Eugene home safely. Could he be hurt somewhere? Or could something unthinkable have happened? Could Eugene have done something, unintentionally, by accident?
One thing Mia and her family know for sure, once the police are involved, they won’t be able to protect Eugene. As the search for Adam begins, life moves fast, and Detective Morgan Janus enters the scene very concerned about normal occurrences vs abnormal, funny considering the truth that nothing about their family is what other people would consider ‘normal’. No way would their father choose to leave, he did everything for Eugene, their bond is special. It’s on Mia to hack into their dad’s laptop, email, etc. and in attempting to do so she discovers her father was collecting data, running his own little experiments, papers with questions and codes. He was in search of the meaning of happiness, even within his own household, but could it be related to his vanishing?
There are secrets Adam has been keeping, and while it is about a missing person, too it is about a family living with neurodiversity. It is an intelligent, moving, rich story that asks us what happiness is and how our expectations, and those of others, form our reality. It is how we miss a lot about those we are closest to and love the most, that even with the ability to communicate our assumptions lead us to dismiss vital facts. Mia learns hard truths about herself in the process, and for me as a reader, it opened up my own biases about verbal acuity and how we measure intelligence as well. I really love this book even though it broke my heart. Yes, read it!!! There wasn’t one sentence that didn’t have me fully engaged.
Publication Date: August 29, 2023
Random House
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