When 12-year-old Julia Pemberton vanishes from a classmate’s birthday party on a sweltering August day in 1985, the citizens of the small town of Chatham, North Carolina, band together to find her. Julia’s athletic best friend, Dell Jenkins, becomes haunted by how little she remembers about the day that Julia vanished, while Julia’s father, Tommy, spirals into depression and rage as he desperately searches for his child. Betsy Glass, the wife of the local dentist, agonizes over how the community will judge her and her family, because the girl disappeared from their home. As months pass and the trail grows cold, the rhythm of small-town life continues, even without Julia’s sweet, buoyant presence, although the disappearance shines a light on how the Glasses, the Pembertons, and the Jenkinses are interconnected, and unsavory facts are revealed. Despite everything, Dell remains determined to find her friend. Richards’ clever decision to present the story from three distinct first-person perspectives—those of Dell, Tommy, and Betsy—allows her to nimbly view the effects of Julia’s disappearance from dynamic angles. As such, this Southern gothic novel focuses more on the impact of a crime on a small community than it does on the minutiae of the police investigation. Richards’ tendency to brush over investigative intricacies prevents the novel from building suspense, but the author shines at honoring the humanity of people in crisis. The novel’s rapid conclusion may strike some readers as too neat, but the well-honed portrayal of characters’ emotions more than compensates.