Anna Hart is a detective in San Francisco with a special unit, know as Searchlight, that specializes in locating missing children. Due to a terrible personal tragedy that sparks a separation between Anna and her husband Brendan, Anna is taking time off in her old hometown of Mendocino, CA. She is adrift and doesn’t know where else to go. This is in the time not so long ago before cell phones and the Web. As she hits town, she sees posters for a missing teen, Cameron Curtis, and Anna irresistibly becomes drawn to the case. She reconnects with her childhood friend Will, who has succeeded his father in the job of sheriff. Overwhelmed by the case, he gratefully accepts Anna’s assistance with the investigation. So begins Anna’s efforts to help Will, help the Curtis family, and face her own personal history that leads to her alcohol problem, obsessive approach to her work, and lack of work-life balance that leads to personal tradgedy.

We learn that Anna’s mother died of drug overdose when Anna was eight years old, after having left Anna alone to care for her two younger half siblings at Christmastime. After one disastrous foster placement after another, which Anna implodes each time through her lack of trust and acting out, she finally finds a solid home with Hap, a park ranger, and his wife Eden. As Anna lets her guard down and learns to love this couple, a friend’s sister goes missing and is later found dead. The tragedy hits her circle of friends very hard. Now, back in Mendocino, reuniting with the town and her friends, this new teen disappearance brings back old feelings that never were resolved.

Another local disappearance occurs, and this one is historically true, that of Polly Klaus, taken at knife-point from her home during a sleepover with two friends. There was a rash of such kidnappings around 1993, just before the Web. At the same time, we were just learning of the extent of the problems of child sexual abuse and child neglect, and the consequences for people when these traumas go untreated, creating more victims in the next generation. We now know more about how patterns left untreated tend to repeat, and PTSD should not be ignored.

This novel is both suspenseful crime investigation, and the facing and resolution of our protagonist’s painful history and present. Without spoiling the exciting ending, Anna begins the road to self-honesty, facing the sad circumstances of her past and present, and regaining hope for a better future for herself and her family. Recommended.