kidnapping – Pleasant Nights

Title: An Untamed State

Author: Roxane Gay

Genre: thriller

To get right to it- this is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’ve been a fan of Roxane Gay’s for year, but I’ve never read her fiction. I loved Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body and have read plenty of her essays, but this was her first novel. I pulled this off my shelf at random and had no idea what it was about or what to expect. And it turned out to be just fantastic. I couldn’t read it fast enough.

From Goodreads: Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port au Prince estate. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As it becomes clear her father intends to resist the kidnappers, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.

An Untamed State is a novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a wilful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent.

The first half of the book is about Mireille and her captors, and it’s very descriptive as to what happens, although not necessarily graphic, but it definitely will be hard for some to read. The second half (this isn’t a spoiler…she tells us she was released after thirteen days on page 1) is about Miri trying to come to terms with and heal her mind and body. The chapters about Miri are from her perspective, but there are chapters about her husband and father that are third-person narrator, which was an interesting shift. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what I loved about this book because some of it is so brutal, but Miri’s strength and resolve are admirable. This book also puts life into perspective. The value of life, the importance of family and loyalty, the strength to survive. I cannot recommend this book enough. Just absolutely amazing.

When the Stars Go Dark

Thank you Netgalley for this book!

I read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain awhile ago but remember liking it quite a bit. The plot is entirely different, historical fiction set in Paris in the early 1900s, about Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley. When I read that she had written a thriller, I was intrigued. Little did I know that this book was also historical fiction based on actual people, this time Polly Klaas. Most Americans will remember her kidnapping. She was taken from her bedroom in front of two friends by a stranger and subsequently murdered. Her story was national headlines for awhile. This story follows fictional girls who go missing around the same time.

From Goodreads: Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When overwhelming tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in.

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives–and our faith in one another.

Anna is flawed, struggling with both her past and her present, which makes her a great main character. She’s captivating and troubled. The layers of her trauma are pulled back slowly, some not revealed until much later in the book, which keeps the reader guessing. I’m not a big historical fiction fan, but McLain has knocked it out of the park twice for me. I’ll definitely be reading more of her work.