The sweet relief of missing children

 by Sarah Braunstein.  Braunstein won the 2007 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and was named as one of the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35, which recognizes five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award winners and finalists. Her debut novel is an unsettling read that is also strangely compelling, though the author reserves all of her compassion for her characters, sparing none for her readers. It follows the meandering, intertwining stories of three young people who go missing. Twelve-year-old Leonora is snatched from a street corner and finds that her upbringing, which has taught her to be sweet and polite, works against her. Sixteen-year-old Paul runs away from his negligent mother and abusive stepfather only to end up drifting for years on end. Teenager Judith, looking for excitement, lands in a seedy hotel room covered in cigarette burns and sadly disabused of her adventurous spirit; even when Judith placidly settles into marriage and parenthood, her dull, bright, busy life has its own kind of horror. Through random encounters and elliptical dialogue, Braunstein locates the pain in these people's lives and makes it shimmer. --Booklist (Check Catalog)