Among the Missing
A Novel
Published on 21. June 2011
272 pages
978-0-440-42346-1 (ISBN)
Description
An accident can end a life.
The same accident can begin one.
Three lives collide in the wake of an unforeseeable tragedy. When a bridge collapses in the Highlands of Scotland, dozens of commuters vanish into the freezing river below, swept by the currents toward the sea, and only an amateur video and the bridge's security camera record their last moments.
A woman tourist, whose car was filmed pulling onto the bridge seconds before it fell, is assumed to be among the missing. But in desperate need of money, she had sold the car only hours before. Now she can begin life over. Her path leads her to a spartan cabin on the bank of the river where, as Annabel, she is reborn, free from her past. Here she lives with Silva, an illegal immigrant whose predicament is compounded by the disappearance of her husband and their child. She waits for them each day, clinging to hope against overwhelming evidence.
The two women are befriended by the boatman Ron, and together they create a fragile sanctuary in the shadow of the bridge that has changed their lives. They keep secrets from one another, yet also connect in ways none of them expects. Lost souls all, they struggle to survive, to trust, and to love even as the consequences of the past prove inescapable.
A masterly novel about the invisible ties that bind us to our identities, to our histories, and to one another, Among the Missing soars with the peerless voice of the author described by P. D. James as an "exciting talent." Morag Joss, with the psychological penetration and the finely wrought prose that are her hallmarks, spins a brilliant tale of damage and reparation, suspicion and salvation.
The same accident can begin one.
Three lives collide in the wake of an unforeseeable tragedy. When a bridge collapses in the Highlands of Scotland, dozens of commuters vanish into the freezing river below, swept by the currents toward the sea, and only an amateur video and the bridge's security camera record their last moments.
A woman tourist, whose car was filmed pulling onto the bridge seconds before it fell, is assumed to be among the missing. But in desperate need of money, she had sold the car only hours before. Now she can begin life over. Her path leads her to a spartan cabin on the bank of the river where, as Annabel, she is reborn, free from her past. Here she lives with Silva, an illegal immigrant whose predicament is compounded by the disappearance of her husband and their child. She waits for them each day, clinging to hope against overwhelming evidence.
The two women are befriended by the boatman Ron, and together they create a fragile sanctuary in the shadow of the bridge that has changed their lives. They keep secrets from one another, yet also connect in ways none of them expects. Lost souls all, they struggle to survive, to trust, and to love even as the consequences of the past prove inescapable.
A masterly novel about the invisible ties that bind us to our identities, to our histories, and to one another, Among the Missing soars with the peerless voice of the author described by P. D. James as an "exciting talent." Morag Joss, with the psychological penetration and the finely wrought prose that are her hallmarks, spins a brilliant tale of damage and reparation, suspicion and salvation.
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Morag Joss
Among the Missing
Book
06/2011
Delacorte Press
€43.16
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Person
Morag Joss is the author of several novels, including the CWA Silver Dagger winner Half Broken Things, which was also adapted as a film for U.K. national television. In 2008 she was the recipient of a Heinrich Böll Fellowship, and in 2009 she was nominated for an Edgar Award for her sixth novel, The Night Following. She is currently at work on her eighth novel, Our Picnics in the Sun, to be published by Delacorte Press.
