The Sweet Relief of Missing Children

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

"A magnificent debut filled with characters so vivid, strange, and richly imagined, you emerge feeling changed." —Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

In New York City, a girl called Lenora vanishes without a trace. Years earlier and miles upstate, Goldie, a wild, negligent mother, searches for a man to help raise her precocious son, Paul, who later discovers that the only way to save his soul is to run away. The Sweet Relief of Missing Children is a suspenseful novel about the power of running and the desire for reinvention. It explores the terror and transcendence of our most central experiences: childhood, parenthood, sex, love.