The Missing Person
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
When art history grad student Lynn Fleming finds out that Wylie, her younger brother, has disappeared, she reluctantly leaves New York and returns to the dusty Albuquerque of her youth. What she finds when she arrives is more unsettling and frustrating than she could have predicted. Wylie is nowhere to be found, not in the tiny apartment he shares with a grungy band of eco-warriors, or lingering close to his suspiciously well-maintained Caprice. As Wylie continues to evade her, Lynn becomes certain that Angus, one of her brother’s environmental cohorts, must know more than he is revealing. What follows is a tale of ecological warfare, bending sensibilities, and familial surprises as Lynn searches for her missing person.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although the title makes this sound like a mystery, it is a knowing and witty take on family ties, the politics of art and academia, and eco-terrorism. When art history graduate student Lynn Fleming finds out that Wylie, her younger brother, is missing or at least hasn't been heard from and can't be located Lynn returns home to Albuquerque to try to find him. Since she left to go to school in New York, she has become a confirmed New Yorker, and the thought of Albuquerque, "the capital of nowhere," makes her shudder, though she reluctantly appreciates Duke City's "scruffy charm." When someone in Albuquerque tells her, "I don't know anybody like you," she "almost choked in exasperation. New York, I wanted to say, was full of people exactly like me." Lynn finds Wylie easily and, in the process, strikes up a romance with Angus, one of Wylie's partners in eco-crime, a sunny and charming plumber whose darker side is gradually revealed. As the schemes of the group Angus leads get riskier and more dangerous, Lynn finds herself becoming involved with their actions and sympathizing with their philosophy, but not their methods or zeal. An interesting subplot about a Mew Mexican woman artist, whose work becomes fodder for Lynn's doctoral dissertation, is woven believably into the narrative. This promising debut is intelligent, insightful and often bitterly funny. FYI: A story by Ohlin will appear in Best American Short Stories 2005.
