making space for those we love

Nora is a renowned architect known for creating spaces that are inviting and reaffirming. Using the natural light to create a room, or a home, that can heal and restore those within is her passion. Her schedule is packed with appointments and projects, but she agreed to talk about another project in Brooklyn anyway. It’s a home that means a lot to her, as it used to belong to her mentor. But when she shows up to the appointment, in the beautiful brownstone that had been lovingly designed by her dear friend, she finds a woman who is about to get married and wants to gut the place.

Nora is about to turn down the job and leave when she realizes who it is who made the appointment. The woman is about to marry her half-brother Sam, whose calls Nora had been ignoring for weeks. But now that he’s gotten her there under sketchy circumstances, she is willing to give him a few minutes. It’s only been a couple of months since their father slipped on the cliffs near his seaside cabin Windbreak, and Sam wants Nora to know a couple of things. First, their father left Windbreak to her. And second, Sam doesn’t think their father fell. He thinks that someone pushed him over that cliff.

Liam Noone had built an empire of small, luxury-driven hotels. They were all beautiful, enviable, successful resorts that were situated in nature. He had been married three times, with his first marriage giving him a daughter and his second marriage giving him twin boys, Sam and his brother Tommy. Liam had tried for years to get Nora to work for him, but she always refused. She had wanted to build something of her own. Tommy had become a lawyer and gone to work for the family business, but Sam had been a baseball star until a car accident ruined his dreams of the MLB. After that, he reluctantly joined his brother in working for their father, but it didn’t fulfill him the way it did Tommy.

But now Liam is gone, the company belonged to Sam and Tommy, and the cabin where he died belonged to Nora. And while Nora doesn’t necessarily believe that Liam’s death was anything but an accident, she does agree to visit Windbreak with Sam and get some more information. The more information they gather, the more people close to their father that they talk to, the more questions arise. It seems like everyone is trying to hide something from them, like they all have an agenda of their own that is keeping them from finding the truth about their father’s death. And the more resistance they come across, the more Nora realizes that maybe they’re not hiding the truth about Liam’s death. Maybe what they’re really hiding is the truth about Liam’s life.

Suddenly Nora feels like she didn’t know her father at all, and she sets about trying to figure out just who he was, to try to see if that will help her come to terms with how he died.

Laura Dave’s new thriller, The Night We Lost Him, is based on a mystery of how a successful man died. But under that, there is a deeply moving picture of a family filled with secrets. Every relationship in this book is imbued with questions, and the search for answers reveals the ways we love and withhold love in order to save something of ourselves from relationships that could consume us. The idea of making space for others is brought into sharp relief by the physical places that Liam and Nora create, as they use light and space to bring about healing and connection.

I thought that The Night We Lost Him was as beautiful a book as I’ve read in a long time. It’s smooth and supple, the words tumbling along as I lost time and found many pages had slipped by as I warmed myself in this story. It’s a gentle thriller, with enough complications to keep me interested but nothing that made me feel tense. The emotional story line is where this book shines, taking the time to look at the small and large decisions we make in relationships, the choices that make us and break us, the moments where that intimacy can deepen or be lost forever. This story is masterfully told but slips by way too quickly. I wanted to wallow in its beauty for much longer. And that is my only complaint.

Galleys for The Night We Lost Him were provided by S&S/Marysue Rucci Books, with many thanks.