ALL THE WAY HOME

One long-ago summer, four girls mysteriously disappeared in the upstate New York town of Lake Charlotte and were never heard from again. Among them were Rory Connolly’s older sister, Carleen, who may have had her own reasons for fading from sight, and Rory’s best friend and next-door neighbor, Emily Anghardt. Rory’s mother, Maura, dropped into deep depression; a year later, her husband dropped dead of a brain aneurysm. Maura skipped her meds and wavered on the brink of insanity while Rory’s younger brother, Kevin, took over the household. Rory went off to college at Berkeley, graduated, traipsed about the country, now is being called home by Kevin. He’s just graduated from college; Rory must care for Maura and their independent young teenage sister, Molly, while Kevin goes backpacking across Europe with his new girlfriend. Not surprisingly, the old fears Rory has buried arise, for it was ten years ago this week that the first girl disappeared—and of the four girls who vanished, not one body was ever found. When a new teenage girl vanishes, all Rory’s nightmares erupt. Heavily plotted from page one, Staub’s second builds suspense more slowly than her feverish but unpromising Fade to Black (1998). The resolution here is more focused and believable, although stock characters and dialogue prevail throughout.