The Child Finder

by Rene Denfeld

Overview

“Aptly unclassifiable, Denfeld’s compulsively readable second novel calls on elements of horror, mystery, fairy tales, and even romance to explore legacies of violence and the resilience of the most vulnerable among us.” — Booklist

A haunting, richly atmospheric, and deeply suspenseful novel from the acclaimed author of The Enchanted about an investigator who must use her unique insights to find a missing little girl.

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon’s Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now—if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder," Naomi is their last hope.

Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.

As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?

Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062659071
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/05/2017
Series:	Naomi Cottle Series , #1
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,423
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Rene Denfeld is an internationally bestselling author, licensed investigator, and foster mother. She is the author of the novels The Butterfly Girl, The Child Finder and The Enchanted. Her novels have won numerous awards including a French Prix, and The New York Times named her a 2017 hero of the year for her justice work. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

…a powerful novel about a search for a missing girl that's also a search for identity…It's Deliverance encased in ice. While Denfeld's novel is indeed loaded with suspense, its resonance comes from its surprising tilt toward storytelling restraint, a rarity in this typically crackling genre. Elegiac, informative and disquieting, it artfully moves between Naomi's painstaking search…and the survival tactics of plucky Madison…Denfeld adroitly divebombs up, down and around her main characters' experience of secrets, resilience, fantasy and death, all set in a dark, gloomy forest fit for the Brothers Grimm.

The New York Times Book Review - Michael Callahan

It’s stunning. From the first page... we are in a strange, forbidding territory.... I couldn’t put this book down.

The Globe and Mail

A hauntingly beautiful, chilling novel by a real-life badass heroine… Denfeld brings [her protagonist] to life with precise, lyrical prose. While the whole book reads like a fairytale for adults, Naomi herself is fully realized and deeply human.

CrimeReads

It’s ‘Deliverance’ encased in ice… Denfeld’s novel is indeed loaded with suspense, its resonance comes from its surprising tilt towards storytelling restraint, a rarity in this typical crackling genre. Elegiac, informative and disquieting… The novel gallops to a suitably heart-racing finish.

New York Times Book Review

At times haunting, at times devastating.... Captivating read.

Bustle

Aptly unclassifiable, Denfeld’s compulsively readable second novel calls on elements of horror, mystery, fairy tales, and even romance to explore legacies of violence and the resilience of the most vulnerable among us.

Booklist

A chillingly good read that will stay with you long after you close the book.

BookPage

In the necessary and uncomfortable places where Rene Denfeld locates her haunting fiction, the lines between victim and perpetrator can be painfully blurry…. Giving voice to those who are metaphorically or even literally voiceless, Rene Denfeld reminds us that consequences continue, aftermath continues — yet we must somehow find ways of holding on to threads of hard-won hope.

Elizabeth Rosner

Gut-wrenching, its compassion goes a long way toward healing readers’ aching hearts.

Shelf Awareness

Aptly unclassifiable, Denfeld’s compulsively readable second novel calls on elements of horror, mystery, fairy tales, and even romance to explore legacies of violence and the resilience of the most vulnerable among us.

Booklist

Rene Denfeld’s novel The Child Finder renders atrocity with depth and heart—a compassion made even more credible by her career as an investigator in death-penalty cases... The Child Finder‘s moral lesson is not new—that hope and humanity can be found in even the darkest places. But the extent to which Denfeld practices that belief is deeply touching, if not even remarkable.

Willamette Week

Rene Denfeld has a gift for shining bright light in dark places. The Child Finder is a gorgeous, haunting gem of a novel. Raw and real yet wrapped in a fairy tale, as lovely and as chilling as the snow.

Erin Morgenstern

A darkly luminous story of resilience and the deeply human instinct for survival, for love. Blending the magical thinking of childhood, of fairy tales, dreams, memories and nightmares, The Child Finder is a terrifying and ultimately uplifting novel that demands to be consumed and then once inside you–lingers.

A.M. Homes

A chillingly good read that will stay with you long after you close the book.” %COMM_CONTRIB%BookPage

Gut-wrenching, its compassion goes a long way toward healing readers’ aching hearts.

Shelf Awareness

Aptly unclassifiable, Denfeld’s compulsively readable second novel calls on elements of horror, mystery, fairy tales, and even romance to explore legacies of violence and the resilience of the most vulnerable among us.

Booklist

A chillingly good read that will stay with you long after you close the book.

BookPage

It’s ‘Deliverance’ encased in ice… Denfeld’s novel is indeed loaded with suspense, its resonance comes from its surprising tilt towards storytelling restraint, a rarity in this typical crackling genre. Elegiac, informative and disquieting… The novel gallops to a suitably heart-racing finish.

New York Times Book Review

At times haunting, at times devastating.... Captivating read.

Bustle

It’s stunning. From the first page... we are in a strange, forbidding territory.... I couldn’t put this book down.

The Globe and Mail

2017-07-17
A gifted investigator combs Oregon's snowy mountain forests for a missing girl.Naomi Cottle is a child finder. Grieving families call on her when their children go missing, and she devotes her entire life to finding them, sometimes dead and sometimes miraculously alive. Like many literary detectives, her personal life suffers for her single-mindedness: she has few friends and remains in only intermittent contact with her foster family. In her latest case, she's been asked to find a girl named Madison Culver, who went missing three years ago, at the age of 5. Although the locals assume Madison froze to death, Naomi, propelled by her own vague early memories of being held hostage as a child, is determined to locate the girl. At the same time Naomi searches for clues in Madison's disappearance, readers are privy to Madison's narrative as she's locked in a cellar with a man she knows only as B. With nothing but her daydreams and memories of fairy tales to keep her sane, Madison reinvents herself as the snow girl and wonders whether the life she once had is gone forever. Aside from a clumsy subplot about Naomi searching for a baby from an impoverished community, Denfeld (The Enchanted, 2014, etc.) keeps the pacing quick as readers rush to discover Madison's fate. While Denfeld's message is meant to be redemptive—no loved child will ever be forgotten—make no mistake: this is also a book that is frankly about the sexual abuse of children. And though Denfeld is no doubt trying to explore the psychological realities of this abuse, and of conditions like Stockholm syndrome, her tendency toward florid writing can make her depiction feel romanticized and takes the book at times from disquieting into downright unpalatable. Denfeld's intentions are good, but her tone strikes the wrong notes.

Kirkus Reviews