Place Last Seen; by Charlotte McGuinn Freeman; Picador; 294 pages; $23.
A first novelist with a Utah background, Charlotte McGuinn Freeman became locally well-known as an employee of the King's English Bookstore while she finished her Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Utah. Inspired by a true story of a lost child in the Sierra Nevadas, the author movingly portrays a 6-year-old Down syndrome child named Maggie, whose parents panic at her loss.While playing hide-and-seek with her older brother, Luke, Maggie runs away. Her mother, Anne, and her father, Richard, search desperately for her before finally calling in a search-and-rescue team. When the team arrives with experienced trackers, volunteers, dogs and topographical maps, the stress level of the Baker family noticeably rises.
Over the course of the book, Freeman sensitively and skillfully paints a portrait of each of the main characters, as they struggle with the possibility that Maggie might never be found. If the story of a search seems initially simplistic, this one is not. This is the story of a very real physical search under challenging circumstances, but it is also the search for love, family, understanding and compassion.
Anne, Richard and Luke all blame themselves. Each character explores the moment of loss over and over again in a vain attempt to explain and understand it. Most members of the search-and-rescue team are highly competent, but they also become emotionally involved with the family, touching off confrontations with each other as they deal with monumental stress.
One of the author's most important accomplishments is in educating the reader about Down syndrome, not in any clinical way but through personality. Freeman makes it clear that Maggie's limitations did not lead to her disappearance, and they don't threaten or lessen the love her family feels for her. The family's love for Maggie is clearly unconditional, and each member resents examples of discrimination or ignorance on the part of people who have misinterpreted Maggie's abilities. In fact, the search team faces limitations of their own because of preconceived notions about her.
All of these characters, including Richard's mother, who, while withholding judgment, rushes to help, emerge as fully-developed, interesting personalities. Freeman also paints a highly visual scene of the Sierra Nevadas, the nature of the outdoors and the intricacies necessary for a search-and-rescue team to do its work.
Although she is unmarried, the author also demonstrates rare insight into the intimate but difficult relationship of parents as they cope, sometimes together and sometimes on their own, with the devastation of losing a child. Richard, as the "easy" personality, makes an effective complement to Anne's serious, more lonely take on life. The fact that the lost Maggie is Anne's "one true love" thankfully does not threaten Richard's undying love for Anne.
But most importantly, Freeman demonstrates a rare gift to make language work in the telling of an emotional, highly personal story. She has so carefully and impressively structured the novel and chosen the words, that reading it is purely pleasurable. The dialogue flows easily, and the descriptive portions are so elegant that they tempt the reader to go over them again and again -- just to enjoy exceptionally good writing.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com