Identity quest

K.A. Merson: The Language of the Birds

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Debut

This novel really lets the author’s freak flag fly, in the best way.  It definitely is not a book for every reader – it will help if you enjoy puzzles, cryptology and maps, but even in you don’t, the story and the characters make the read worthwhile.  The main character, Arizona, is a neurodivergent 17 year old who has just lost her father.  As the book opens, she and her mother are headed to the ghost town of Bodie, California, to scatter her father’s ashes.

She and her mother and Arizona’s dog, Mojo, have arrived in the family Airstream, and when they get there, Arizona tells her mother she’d like some time to herself.  When she goes to meet up with her mother at the appointed time, however, her mother is nowhere to be found.  Hours later, Arizona at last reports her mother’s disappearance to a park ranger who tells her to wait at her campsite. read more

Lori Rader-Day: The Lucky One

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The Lucky One follows the stories of Alice Fine, who as a child emerged unscathed from a kidnapping, and Merrily Cruz, who wants badly to find her missing father – or the closest approximation to a father that she’s known.  Rader-Day, in her typical fashion, fleshes out these women’s stories with psychological background to each character, building and building them, until the two women practically become real.

Alice’s obsession with her kidnapping leads her to a website called The Doe Pages, where people are searching for the lost.  She’s drawn to it and she also thinks maybe she can find her kidnapper there.  Her life is a little shut off – she’s broken up with her fiancée and she lives alone.  She works in the office of the family construction company, with her father and uncle as benevolent bosses.  The women on the Doe Pages, strangers, become acquaintances, then friends. read more