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A Novel
by Sarah Braunstein
In New York City, a girl called Leonora 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. As the narrative moves back and forth in time, we find deeper interconnections between these stories and growing clues about Leonora - this missing girl whose face looks out from telephone poles and billboards - whom one character will give anything to save.
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.
"Through random encounters and elliptical dialogue, Braunstein locates the pain in these people's lives and makes it shimmer." - Booklist
"Braunstein paints gorgeous portraits of a wide variety of characters, all fully realized. It's tough at times to tell who's who, and how they are related, but the reader's effort is rewarded. Highly recommended to readers of contemporary fiction." - Library Journal
"What I admire about this collage of a novel is Braunstein’s compassion for her characters, her willingness to dig deep to find the source and shape of their pain as well as the strengths they all possess." - Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award Finalist, author of American Salvage
"I have never encountered a book that treated its characters with such savage compassion." - Salvatore Scibona author of The End
"A magnificent debut...You emerge from her work feeling changed. This novel marks the arrival of a fierce and important new literary voice." - Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, National Book Award Finalist, author of Madeleine is Sleeping
"This is an author who remembers acutely the powerlessness and possibility of childhood, the way every first is both a thrill and a terror...I love this book so much, I hated to reach the final page." - Malena Watrous, author of If You Follow Me
This information about The Sweet Relief of Missing Children was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Braunstein is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Writers' Award. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Portland, Maine.
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