The Missing (Vintage Contemporaries) [Paperback]

Tim Gautreaux (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 9, 2010 | Series: Vintage Contemporaries

A masterful novel set in 1920s Louisiana, The Missing is the story of Sam Simoneaux, a floorwalker at a New Orleans department store. When a little girl is kidnapped on Sam’s watch he is haunted by guilt, grief, and ghosts from his own troubled past. Determined to find her, Sam sets out on a journey through a world of music and violence, where riverboats teem with drinking and dancing, and where dark swamplands conceal those who choose to live by their own laws. With the fate of the stolen child looming, The Missing vividly depicts an America lurching away from war, where civilization is only beginning to penetrate the hinterlands, and a man must choose between compassion and vengeance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bayou shepherd of half-sunk souls, Gautreaux returns to the land of the lost and the lonely in his haunting and transient third book (after The Clearing). Post-WWI Louisiana is a root-buckled and magnolia-haunted underworld for seedy, drunken mobs and twisted backwoods families. Floating through the chaos is Sam Simoneaux, who, half dead after the slaughter of his parents and the later loss of his two-year-old son to fever, undertakes a quest to find a missing girl. Encountering embittered thieves, forlorn vaudevillians and icy bourgeoisie, Simoneaux is a keen observer who can find the one good stitch of humanity in an otherwise sordid tableau, even as his investigation begins to connect back to his family's murders. He is also a refreshingly candid voice, brimming with a lyrical intensity that graces some of the best Southern literature. Though the hasty, romantic wrapup to Sam's investigation and his refusal to exact revenge on his family's murderers—emotionally tepid even through the novel's decisive climax—obscure Gautreaux's finer redemptive tones, Sam's struggle to redeem the memories of his son and parents sustains the book's raw beauty. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Reviewers appreciated not just the prose and the characters of The Missing but also how different it was from most contemporary novels. While much fiction today revels in ambiguity and irony, Gautreaux’s story has an overall moral theme about justice and revenge. That’s not to say it’s a sermon, however: several critics compared the book to an adventure novel. They also appreciated the book’s unusual pacing that “carries us along as it branches and swells, as if inspired by the great river on which so much of this book takes place” (Washington Post). Gautreaux establishes much of Sam’s backstory in the beginning and then devotes the rest of the book to Sam’s time working on a steamboat and pursuing the missing girl. All of this adds up to a work that critics found moving and highly original.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (March 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307454681
• ISBN-13: 978-0307454683
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #318,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tim Gautreaux is the author of two previous novels and two collections of stories. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Harper's Magazine, and The New Yorker, as well as in volumes of the O. Henry and The Best American Short Story annuals. A professor emeritus in English at Southeastern Louisiana University, he lives with his family in Hammond.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite! March 13, 2009

By Charlotte Vale-Allen VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Tim Gautreaux is a dream of a writer, with a rare and wonderful talent for setting an era and populating it with fascinating people. I say "people" because his creations are far more substantial than mere characters; they get up and walk around and fascinate the reader with their unpredictability. Nothing, in any of his books, is ever predictable. This time out, he takes us for a lengthy ride on a ramshackle entertainment steamboat, making music and discovering his personal depths as he searches for a stolen child and his long-lost family. From small children to rotting-alive villains, everyone is real; and one reads, often, with held breath--fearful/hopeful of what might happen next. This is, quite simply, as good as it gets when it comes to quality fiction. And, as with his previous novels, I despaired of getting to the end because I'll have to wait now for the next wonderful piece of writing to come. My applause to the immensely gifted author and my highest recommendation to readers.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "In Heaven all the interesting people are missing." Nietzshe February 14, 2010

By michael a. draper TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Not since reading Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain," have I wholeheartedly enjoyed a story of a time in history and the characters who had so much to tell as in reading "The Missing."

It's New Orleans, after WWI, Sam Simoneaux returns from the war. He hadn't engaged in the action but still experienced the horrific aftermath of the conflict. At home, ready for a more peaceful life, he takes a job as a floor walker at a department store. A little girl is kidnapped from the store while he is on duty and he loses his job.

Having lost a child to sickenss, he's anguished by the parents' pain. He accepts a job, joining them on a steamboat providing entertainment along the Mississippi waters. Sam feels that he could search for the missing child as the boat stops at towns along the river.

He keeps his eyes open, looking for the one thing he remembers about the kidnapping, a woman missing her front teeth.

As Sam's search continues, the author's rich description of life along the river banks draws the reader's interest and imagination. We observe hard working men and women drawn to the boat by the sounds of the calliope.

One lead surfaces about a family named Shadlock. What happens next makes Sam greatful that he's still alive. He's a haunted character, but admirable for his compassion, bravery and determination.

The Mississippi is also a character as the reader experiences the life of the people along its shores. We see the lawlessness, the excitement that the musical steamboat brings to the farmers, the saw millers, and "hillbillies" along the river's edge.... In this manner, there is a similarity to Inman's odyssey in "Cold Mountain," experiencing the people on his travels back home after the war, wanting to be with his love and have peace.

Among the other characters, Ralph Shadlock, who bemoaned the loss of his dog more than the death of his mother was the most memorable.

The plot was rich with folklore and descriptions of life in the past, it provides a vivid picture of the music, prejudice and difficulties of the time. Read more ›

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable tale by a master storyteller March 16, 2009

By Darrelyn Saloom ficwriter

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Welcome to the world of Sam Simoneaux, a man born from a cold potbellied stove. Plucked from its ashes by his uncle, a Frenchman farmer in Louisiana, because his mother is dead and is joined by his father. Leaving Simoneaux with only his father's French blood and his love of music. And both serve him well on his exotic journey from his uncle's farm to New Orleans to a steamboat called the Ambassador. A violent trek that takes him face-to-face with his own loss and "into a wild uncharted, dead-serious place cut off from fathers and all things fathers teach and give."

Ironically, while searching for a missing girl, the fatherless Frenchman becomes mentor to the missing girl's brother, August. Simoneaux befriends the boy on the Ambassador while playing music for pugilistic backwater men and women picked up in places like Stovepipe Bend and Chicken Neck Island. But it is when Simoneaux follows August deep into the woods, seeking his younger sister and revenge on her kidnappers that their friendship deepens and the Frenchman teaches August the truth of his grudge: "You'd like to think you're going to help your mamma or provide justice for the world, but you really just want to kill somebody to make yourself feel big."

The Frenchman's journey is a suspenseful mule ride into the woods, on railways through backwater towns, on steamboats along riverbanks, and eventually back to streetcars and his wife, Linda, in New Orleans. But it is so much more than a means of transportation into violence and kidnappings and revenge. It is the journey of a gentle man, who needs to redeem himself for an unlucky fate. A man whose journey does not end until his paddlewheel turns full circle and takes him back to the house of his own massacred family.... And back to the potbellied stove where his story began. Read more ›

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable writing October 1, 2009

By Margaret Dybala VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The author writes a wonderful book full of vivid characters and a real sense of place. Set in New Orleans just after World War I, the book opens on the last day of the War, where we meet Sam, a young Cajun who lands in France on the day the Armistice is declared. After returning to New Orleans, he gets what for him is the perfect job. He is a floor walker in a nice department store. But one day, a little girl goes missing, and Sam gets fired, since it happened on his watch.

At this point, I had already noted the good plotting and writing, and figured it would be an excellent whodunit. But the book is so much more than that. We learn about Sam's awful history, and the actual crime is solved with lots of story beyond it. That's because this isn't essentially a mystery, but instead is a wonderful study in justice, retribution, forgiveness, and family.

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who likes a book where mystery transcends into literature.