Gone Too Long
A Novel
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $6.99
Publisher Description
“This electrifying novel…[is] a gripping mystery with a timely, unnerving message—you won’t be able to look away.”
—People, "Book of the Week"
“A book so good you can’t look away.”
--O Magazine, “Best Books of Summer”
Two-time Edgar Award–winning author Lori Roy entangles readers in a heart-pounding tale of two women battling for survival against a century’s worth of hate.
On the day a black truck rattles past her house and a Klan flyer lands in her front yard, ten-year-old Beth disappears from her Simmonsville, Georgia, home. Armed with skills honed while caring for an alcoholic mother, she must battle to survive the days and months ahead.
Seven years later, Imogene Coulter is burying her father—a Klan leader she has spent her life distancing herself from—and trying to escape the memories his funeral evokes. But Imogene is forced to confront secrets long held by Simmonsville and her own family when, while clearing out her father's apparent hideout on the day of his funeral, she finds a child. Young and alive, in an abandoned basement, and behind a door that only locks from the outside.
As Imogene begins to uncover the truth of what happened to young Beth all those years ago, her father’s heir apparent to the Klan’s leadership threatens her and her family. Driven by a love that extends beyond the ties of blood, Imogene struggles to save a girl she never knew but will now be bound to forever, and to save herself and those dearest to her. Tightly coiled and chilling, Gone Too Long ensnares, twists, and exposes the high price we are willing to pay for the ones we love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gripping, gut-wrenching thriller from Edgar-winner Roy (The Disappearing), a member of the local Ku Klux Klan in Simmonsville, Ga., kidnaps 10-year-old Beth, the daughter of a single mother, in a bungled attempt to scare Beth's Puerto Rican babysitter and the babysitter's family into leaving the area. Unwilling to kill Beth, her captor holds her prisoner in the basement of an outbuilding on a remote property used for Klan business. Seven years later, in 2017, Imogene Coulter, a foe of the Klan who's descended from a prominent Klansman, by chance discovers the basement, where she finds a boy, Christopher, who has been held there since infancy with Beth, and takes him home. Shortly before, Beth had escaped and is in hiding. The tension rises as Beth tries to survive and Imogene fights to safeguard Christopher (and herself) from his captors. Vividly told though somewhat implausibly plotted, Roy's tragic cautionary tale demonstrates what can happen when decent people allow themselves to be bullied into turning a blind eye while others do their worst, including murder. Greg Iles's fans will find a lot to like.
Customer Reviews
Can do better
3.5 stars
Author: American mystery writer. Lives in Florida. ‘Bent Road’ (2010), won the Edgar Allen Poe award for best first novel by an American author. Her subsequent works have appeared in various ‘best of’ lists, and ‘Let Me Die In His Footsteps’ (2016) won the Edgar Allen Poe award for best novel, which made her the first author to win in both the ‘best first novel’ and ‘best novel’ categories. Pretty good, eh? Gone Too Long is her latest.
Plot: Rural Southern town under insidious control by the Klan. Daughter of unmarried mother abducted and held captive for a prolonged period in a basement where she has a kid, a la Emma Donoghue’s ‘Room.’ The kid is eventually found years later by Years later, the illegitimate daughter of the spouse of the local head honcho Klansman, who has just died, stumbles upon the kid in her old man’s basement. Said daughter has mucho issues of her own. Stuff happens. Slowly. Short interludes summarising the history of the Klan are interesting.
Narrative: alternating chapters featuring prolonged interior monologues by the abductee Beth, and the finder Imogene.
Prose: generally polished but overwritten at times. Sinister mood not sustained well enough for a book with pretensions to be Southern gothic.
Character development: Reasonable but not outstanding for the two main protagonists, limited for the supporting cast, some of whom seemed to serve no useful purpose, for me at least.
Bottom line: Interesting premise and sound execution, but this never rose to great heights for me. Given her track record, I can’t help feeling Ms Roy can do better.