Summary

The novel begins with the narrator, Sam, explaining to readers that when Julia disappeared, her mother and his ex-wife told him that finding out exactly what had happened to her would be worse than never knowing the truth. She said that the details would tear him apart. Despite this, his “mind would not stop generating hypotheses: Abducted. Raped. Defiled” (1). The sheriff’s theory of her disappearance was that she had merely run off and would “come back into our lives offering a halfhearted apology about a boy you’d followed or a friend you’d joined on a trip across the ocean” (1). Despite this, they organized search partners and contacted the media to no avail.

Julia’s father recounts the details they do know about the night when she disappeared, that she went to a bar with friends to listen to music, did...