The Bright Forever
Language: English
Crimes Against Domestic Fiction Family Life Fiction General General Fiction Girls Illinois Indiana Kidnapping Literary Loss (Psychology) Missing children Psychological Psychological fiction Revenge Suspense Suspense Fiction
Publisher: Crown
Published: May 3, 2005
Description:
A dark, harrowing novel about a nine-year-old girl's disappearance and the lasting impact it has on her close-knit community
On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books.
This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever , a deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever . Fact, speculation, and contradiction play off one another as the details about Katie's disappearanceand about the townspeopleunfold, creating a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. A nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss, The Bright Forever is a compelling and emotional tale about the human need to know even the hardest truth.
From Publishers Weekly
The halting, harrowing narrative of Martin's second novel (after 2001's Quakertown) draws upon multiple voices to piece together a tragedy with its own slippery backstory. On a summer evening in an "itty-bitty" Indiana town in the 1970s, nine-year-old Katie Mackey rides her bicycle to the library and never comes home. Her father, Junior Mackey, owns the town's glassworks, and to the town's residents the Mackeys are like the Kennedys, envied for their looks, their wealth and their picture-perfect life. Peeling back the layers of his characters, Martin slips easily into their darker, secret lives—lives that may harbor clues to Katie's disappearance: Henry Dees, the reclusive math tutor who sometimes lurks in the Mackeys' house; Clare Mains, the widow shunned for remarrying out of loneliness; her galling husband, Raymond R., whose drug binges and blackouts occupy stretches of unaccounted-for time; Katie's parents, freshly tortured by their own tarnished past; and Katie's brother, 17-year-old Gilley, who seizes the chance to gain his father's approval by avenging Katie's death. Rich details and raw emotion mix as Martin, in engaging the human desire to excavate the truth, underscores its complex, elusive nature. Agent, Phyllis Wender. (May)
From Booklist
Thirty years after the fact, a schoolteacher in a small Indiana town narrates this gripping tale of a crime and the lives it has forever changed. On a quiet evening in July, nine-year-old Katie Mackey leaves home for the library, and never returns. In chapters written in different voices and jumping back and forth between that day and four days later, the author carefully lays out his simple yet mesmerizing plot, gradually revealing the dark secrets held by those involved--secrets that, when woven together, propel the action to its seemingly preordained conclusion. The teacher, Henry Dees, is a lonely misfit who longs for a child of his own. His neighbor hides a drug addiction even from his wife, and his discovery of Henry's secret longings gives him a sense of power. This lethal combination leads to a horrendous crime that leaves Henry wracked with guilt, knowing he'll "always be living that summer in that town." Martin's novel is hard to put down, as these dark and intertwined lives march inexorably to tragedy. Deborah Donovan
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