Publisher's Weekly Review
With his first novel for adults, Johnston focuses on the Courtlands-Grant and Angela, their daughter Caitlin and son Sean-on a family vacation in the Rocky Mountains. They've barely arrived when the siblings head off to explore the area. Before long, Sean is discovered by the side of a road, badly injured... and alone. His 18-year-old sister, Caitlin, has been kidnapped by a disturbed woodsman who keeps her chained in his isolated mountain cabin. As the months go by, Grant and Angela's initially fragile marriage breaks apart while the teenage Sean matures into a troubled adult. Johnston's chapters hop from one Courtland to the other, occasionally skipping around in time. Such abrupt shifts can seem particularly confusing in an audio production, which is probably why two narrators were used. Sands, with her distinctive, natural delivery, quickly identifies the chapters devoted to daughter and mother, distinguishing them by using a firmer, depressed delivery for the suicide-prone Angela and a spacey, helpless natter for Caitlin. Sands also captures an infuriatingly patronizing passive-aggressiveness for Caitlin's captor. Bray is responsible for a larger portion of the book, giving voice to the chapters featuring Grant and Sean, as well as a few told from the point of view of the sheriff and his younger brother, Billy. He gives Grant a rugged timbre, whereas Sean sounds more like a drifter who feels responsible for his sister's misfortune. Bray's sheriff is a hard man doing a tough job, while Billy is sly, brash, and arrogant, an obvious troublemaker who slowly becomes integral to this intriguing study of a tragedy's aftermath. An Algonquin hardcover. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
When a teenage girl, early in Johnston's debut thriller, voices sympathy for the cannibalistic fate of the snowbound Donner party, would it be presumptuous to suspect that in due time she'll be compelled to make some pretty unsavory survival choices of her own? The speaker, a recent high school graduate and champion runner named Caitlin, seems primed for adversity. One feels less sanguine about the self-preservation abilities of her addiction-prone family after Caitlin's disappearance during a vacation in the Rockies, an event that occurs in plain sight of her kid brother, Sean. Caitlin's mother descends into pills, while her father, a carpenter hobbled by missing fingers from a drinking mishap, abandons his family to keep vigil at the Colorado ranch of an elderly friend Sean, palpably traumatized by his failure to keep his sister from harm's way, develops a rescue complex that gets him into trouble of his own and, together with many other characters, inhales enough cigarette smoke to fog up all seven seasons of "Mad Men." Johnston's descriptive prose attains a level of visceral brio, despite a self-conscious piling on of heartbeat imagery that seems weirdly at odds with all those smoldering cigarettes. While the author periodically checks in on Caitlin's desperate plight, it's the men - bullies and stymied heroes alike - who power this engulfing thriller-cum-western, which is at its most potent in the adversarial banter of a couple of guys, sniffing around each other like pit bulls.
Library Journal Review
Sean Courtland is knocked from his mountain bike and severely injured while accompanying his sister Caitlin on a conditioning run in the Rockies. Caitlin vanishes without a trace. While Sean recovers, their parents, Grant and Angela, run through their savings searching for Caitlin and also run out of patience with each other. Two years later, with Grant in Colorado still searching and Angela back home in Wisconsin, Sean borrows his father's truck and sets off on his own. Featuring some interesting supporting characters and tense situations, Johnston's (Irish Girl) abduction thriller provokingly explores the mysteries of life, death, manhood, sexual exploitation, fate, and family relationships. R.C. Bray and Xe Sands give the book an excellent reading. VERDICT This audio is highly recommended for adult mystery fiction collections.-Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
