Lori Rader-Day: The Lucky One
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.