For the popular, slightly wild 18-year-old Kim Larsen and her friends, Kingsville is the kind of small town where “every night they fought a war against boredom and lost.” While waiting out the summer before she heads off to a nearby college, Kim works a mind numbing summer job at the local Conoco gas station and spends her time off partying with her friends. Nothing about her life is out of the ordinary — not her averagely middle class parents, who love each other and their children, or her geeky little sister, or even her friends. Until one day she disappears, leaving a hole in their insular community and raising questions about everything everyone took for granted.
Songs for the Missing is an intimate and devastating portrait of the interior life of a family and community enmeshed in the kind of tragedy that tabloid magazines and TV love to focus on, frequently at the expense of those involved. The book gives a voice to those who are all too often overlooked and raises important questions about how much we can ever know our neighbors, even in the most tight-knit communities, while simultaneously examining the dynamics of a family and a marriage after such a loss.
