You can Google Laurel Mack and find out all about her, all about her family. Laurel was the mother of the beautiful, smart Ellie Mack, the sixteen-year-old who went missing one day on her way to the library. Laurel used to have a big happy family. Now she lives alone. Her husband has moved on to another woman. Her other children have grown up and moved out. Her mother is in a home.

Years have passed since Ellie went missing. But Laurel can’t completely move on. She wants to know what happened to her daughter. She needs to know what happened to her daughter. She feels like she can’t connect with life again until she does.

Then she meets Floyd, a nice guy in a cafe willing to share his slice of carrot cake with her. And after a couple of nice dinners together, she finds herself feeling better. But when she meets his nine-year-old daughter Poppy, Laurel is thrown for a curve again. Poppy looks just like her Ellie, her daughter who has been missing for ten years. How could that be possible?

As Laurel puts together the pieces of her lost daughter’s life, what she really finds are the parts of herself that she had lost and the ability to reconnect to the people who matter the most to her.

Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone is in turn heart-warming and incredibly distressing. Moving from past to present, telling the story from the viewpoints of several different characters, and finding the grace in even the most spirit-destroying of circumstances, this novel took me from the depths of despair to a genuine feeling of hope and faith in life.

I listened to this book on audio, and I was captivated by narrator Helen Duff’s performance. I don’t think all the character voices were successful, but the most prominent ones were, and it took me into the story in a way that the words on a page couldn’t do.

This is not a novel for everyone. There are scenes that are especially dark and painful to read (or listen to), so if you are sensitive to hearing the voice of a truly despicable human being, then I would recommend you skip this book. Because Jewell’s ability to bring all her characters to life means that not everyone is likable, or even palatable, but they are all so real you could imagine them as genuine individuals, whether you want to or not.

I struggled with this book because of that. I almost stopped listening because of the depths of evil. But I pushed through and found a truly redemptive story here. It’s not a story I’ll be able to walk away from easily, but I am glad that I made it to the end. It was powerful and moving, and one that will stay in my heart for a long time.

Galleys for Then She Was Gone were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, but the I purchased the audiobook myself through Audible.