Amissing woman and a stray earring spark a media frenzy
Single mom Jenna Barton was supposed to meet her lifelong (and much wealthier) best friend, Celia Walters, at a park. But she arrived late, as usual, and Celia wasn’t there. She hasn’t been seen since, and Jenna blames her tardiness for her friend’s disappearance.
David Bell’s “Since She Went Away” explores the aftermath of that disappearance, as Celia’s vanishing becomes national news and Jenna tries to uncover the truth.
The friends had drifted apart in recent years: “They were both raising children, both working and Jenna knew that happened to friends sometimes as time went by, even the best of friends. But they both had high hopes for that night, a chance to reconnect away from their kids, their jobs, their everyday lives. A chance to be free and even a little wild again just like when they were teenagers. But Jenna blew it. She’d shown up 15 minutes late.”
Since that night, Jenna has spent her free time combing through message boards dedicated to unresolved missingpersons cases, an attempt to find any thread that will lead her to Celia — and assuage her guilt. One of Celia’s diamond earrings was found where the two were supposed to meet, and it holds the only clue about her disappearance. The national media have seized on the case and hound Jenna at work and at home for any scoop or reaction that might boost ratings.
Three months later, when her 15-year-old son’s girlfriend vanishes, too, Jenna begins to unwind the tangled truth behind her best friend’s disappearance. As family secrets and questions of reputation come to light, she discovers how a few lies can shatter lives.
Bell, who has written several thrillers, is a skilled storyteller who knows how to zoom his writer’s lens in on a character’s subtle insecurities, giving readers a sense they are in a character’s mind: “(Jenna) turned on a lamp, which cast a faint halo of yellow light on the space. The house looked neat and orderly, just the way she liked it. The place wasn’t much, about 1,500 square feet, and it still needed work. But it was hers, slowly being paid for by her job as a nurse. Didn’t this make her an adult: a job, a house, a kid?”
The novel alternates between Jenna’s point of view and son Jared’s as they navigate life under the unforgiving media spotlight and the skeptical gaze of the police.
Jenna’s point of view is what you would expect from a mother in her late 30s who is struggling not only with her friend’s disappearance but with how much freedom to give her teenage son. Though Jared’s point of view is a more young-adult style of storytelling, both voices are equally compelling and work well together within the context of the story.
The pacing of the story is in line with Jenna’s search for answers — that is, sizzling at the beginning, moving steadily while traversing obstacles throughout the middle and back to a breakneck speed at the end. The story ends abruptly and, though the resolution is eminently satisfying, many readers will wish there were a few more pages.