Synopsis
A masterful novel set in 1920s Louisiana, The Missing is the story of Sam Simoneaux, a floorwalker at a New Orleans department store. When a little girl is kidnapped on Sam’s watch he is haunted by guilt, grief, and ghosts from his own troubled past. Determined to find her, Sam sets out on a journey through a world of music and violence, where riverboats teem with drinking and dancing, and where dark swamplands conceal those who choose to live by their own laws. With the fate of the stolen child looming, The Missing vividly depicts an America lurching away from war, where civilization is only beginning to penetrate the hinterlands, and a man must choose between compassion and vengeance.
The New York Times - Malena Watrous
Gautreaux has a mythic sense of plot, a keen ear for dialect and vivid powers of description…[he's] an old-fashioned story teller, a spinner of yarns with a moral. Make no mistake, vengeance begets vengeance. But love is an equally powerful force in this novel, which comes to a moving and resonant conclusion as Sam's life and the missing girl's converge in an unexpected way.