The Missing

Sam Simoneaux is the floor-walker at a major retailer in New Orleans when a little girl is stolen from her parents. His failure to prevent the theft costs him his job and embroils him in the lives of the girl and her family. His search for Lily brings him face-to-face with all the forms loss can take in a life and reconnects him with a loss of his own that needs answers.

There is a flavor to this novel that is uniquely Southern. You can feel the rock of the Mississippi River, see the small towns that line her shores, catch the stench of the backwaters in which the least civilized of the people live, and feel the pull of family that is forged in blood. Characters that make minor appearances come on scene with so much wisdom and carrying show more such harrowing stories of their own that not one of them feels superfluous or unnecessary.

Along with confronting loss, Simoneaux must also confront revenge, the need for it and the uselessness of it.

It occurred to him that maybe he should have learned along the way that something like revenge did matter. But what use was it? Settling old scores right? Paying back a son of a bitch? He wasn’t trained to think that way. His uncle had told him many times that revenge didn’t help anybody and that the punishment for being a son of a bitch was being one.

All of which does not keep the heart and soul from screaming for some immediate and visible justice to be inflicted on someone who has himself inflicted a wound that cannot and will not ever heal. When we bleed do we not think the blood of our assailant would perhaps be the only way to ease the pain?

He felt sick for her, but terrible for himself as well, for the thin shoulder he cupped in his right hand might have been his own sister’s or brother’s, and then he was crushed by a deeper understanding of what he had lost back before he knew what loss was. He didn’t know such a feeling could come so late…

What makes Sam such a remarkable character for me is how much he cares, how willing he is to accept not only his own culpability but responsibility that should probably fall onto other shoulders. He is wise, with a sharp mind, but he acts from his heart; his heart always wins out. He is, in a word, unforgettable.

This book was recommended to me by my Goodreads friend, Kirk Smith. I wish I could tell him now how much I enjoyed it and how grateful I am for being introduced to this author, but Kirk was recently killed in an accident, so I will have to miss that opportunity to share this with him. It seems appropriate that this book would be about loss. I’m pretty sure the world is missing a very good man in Kirk Smith and that countless lives are diminished by his absence. show less

Sam Simoneaux has returned from France, where a life changing experience during WWI has him eagerly longing for the normalcy of his job as a department store floorwalker in New Orleans. His wife also longs for his return where they both face their new life together without the child they lost to a viral infection. But much to their great disappointment, quite a different life is in store for them when Sam fails to prevent a kidnapping from taking place under his watch at the store. The bad publicity prompts the store’s owner to fire Sam for allowing the abduction to take place and Sam soon finds himself working on a Mississippi riverboat, along with the child’s parents. He took this job hoping to get a lead on the child’s show more whereabouts, return her to her parents and, ultimately, be able to return to his floor walking job. Along the way, Sam discovers the truth about the loss of his own family, when he was an infant. Two mysteries for the price of one! What could be better.

Although it took some time to get sucked into the suspense and mystery of the narrative, this book turned out to be a terrific stand alone mystery and I was glad to read one that is not ultimately a part of a series. Gautreaux builds suspense and evokes a time and place that no longer exists in this country. The music on the riverboat calls to mind a simpler time, it’s during Prohibition after all, and the characters we meet during the voyage really do make the sting of a horrific crime easier to take. And it doesn’t take Gautreaux long before he relieves the reader that the child is safe and being held by a couple of bunglers and you know that this will come out fine. It’s not about that anyway. It’s more a novel about love and family, human travail, history and hope, and the idea that revenge can take many forms and isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. All this with the backdrop of a Mississippi riverboat. You’ll swear you can hear the honky tonk piano and the sax wailing in the style of the twenties. Simply beautiful.

”(Sam) barely had time to sew his vest buttons back on before climbing the bandstand and catching the downbeat from the drummer. The first tune was ‘Japanese Sandman,’ jacked up in tempo, and he felt he was an eighth beat behind everyone else, playing uphill into the alto sax and clarinet duel in the middle. Several young Vicksburg couples began dancing badly, tripping, kicking shins on their turns, and Sam hung on. The next tune was a waltz, and then he got on top of the following foxtrot and stayed there. As the dance deck heated up, sweat began to sting his eyes; then the boat pulled out and the breeze came through, fluttering the bleached tablecloths. Between tunes he watched the floor, looked at faces, tried to read minds, studied the men lurking against the white-enameled stanchions, hoping to see…someone whose face showed inexplicable guilt or longing.” (Page 109)

If you liked The Sisters Brothers you may find this southern version to your liking too. Quirkiness without the violence. Highly recommended. show less

The Missing. Tim Gautreaux. 2009. What a beautiful novel—Southern and Catholic! I have no idea why I ordered this book or how long I’ve had it, but once again, I am soooooooooooo sorry that I waited so long to read it. Sam Simoneaux was 6 months old when his family was murdered. Sam was saved because his father put him in the stove, and his uncle found him. This and his experiences in WWI left Sam confused and troubled about purpose and life. When he was working as a floor walker in a big department store in New Orleans, a young daughter of a couple of musicians from a river boat is stolen. Sam is blamed and fired. He is told that he can have his job back if he finds the girl. Sam gets a job on the river boat and the search begins. show more Eventually Sam not only finds the child, he also sees more ugliness and violence than he saw in the war and learns what his uncle tries to teach him, that those who do evil make their own hell. Gautreaux certainly knows Cajun Louisiana and life on a river boat. The book is violent and not for everyone, but it is also a story of love and redemption. show less

The Missing takes place in New Orleans in the 1920s, and the writing is so vivid that you can almost smell the Mississippi River mud. Sam, the main character, works as a floorwalker in a department store until a young child is kidnapped from the store. He loses his job, and the following tale is across between a Cormac McCarthy novel and the film Raising Arizona. Tim Gautreaux does a beautiful job of bringing to life the Louisiana Cajun culture where music, food, and violence come together. There are crimes committed by families that live so far off the grid that they can only found on horseback, and no law enforcement agency will claim jurisdiction there. Like the Cajun Navy, Sam follows the path of trying to right wrongs, some of them show more recent and some of them so far in the past that the perpetrators have become their own victims. I can't wait to read another one of his books. show less

Great book. Gautreaux's best novel.
The book's central character, Sam, was orphaned in his own childhood by the murder of his family and later became entwined in the tragedies of other children -- a French child whose house Sam accidentally destroyed in WWI and another kidnapped from her parents and sold to a childless couple. Sam sets out on an odyssey to find the kidnapped child and repair his own life. The odyssey takes him up and down the Mississippi River on a showboat and through the backwoods of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

Much of the book addresses questions of revenge, whether revenge can repair the damage done to Sam and the others. Not to give away the story, but the story of the French child neatly frames the story show more and provides perspective for Sam's own confrontation with revenge and just punishment. show less

I liked Sam's background and his occasional use of Cajun French, and I really liked the descriptions of music and the steamboat travel. Overall the story felt realistic, not like a fairy tale. I did feel it dragged a bit in places, but that could have been me being impatient with some of the description.

Tim Gautreaux’s The Missing is written beautifully, full of evocative prose, and Southern dialect. He has an original story to tell set in the mid 1920’s on a riverboat that takes people on dance cruises, with the man character, Sam Simoneaux, working on the boat while at the same time looking for a stolen child in and round the ports where they dock. The basic themes of the book are of justice, revenge and redemption. Sam struggles with all of these, and in the end eventually finds redemption for his murdered family and the loss of his own son to illness, by confronting his family’s murderers.

The reason I didn’t give this book a higher rating is because it is not a book that I will remember for long. The characters and the show more story will not stay with me, although I think I may remember that it was well written, but little else. His characters do not resonate and in the end will be quickly forgotten. show less