This story is a mother's worst nightmare. You glance away and in that one minute of inattention, you lose your life. You lose your child. How does one deal with something like that? The story's been done before, Deep End of the Ocean, by Jacquelyn Mitchard, which they made into a great movie, The Adam Walsh Story, heartbreakingly played by JoBeth Williams as the mother, and Kate Nelligan as the brave mother in Without A Trace. For this story, it centers around Abby, who isn't even Emma's mother, but who is engaged to her father and finds herself in that terrible situation. I think maybe in this case it would be a much greater case of loss and sorrow, to lose someone else's child, how could you live with yourself? How could you ever forgive yourself, even if everyone else does? Abby and Emma are shelling for sand dollars on the shores of Ocean Beach, where a foggy haze lingers over the sky. Abby looks away from Emma to take a photograph of a seal pup. When she looks up, Emma is nowhere to be found. Thus starts the heart wrenching search, a story of realization and determination. A story of faith and hope even when it seems everything is lost. A story of discovery and justice. Every street scene evokes the mood and atmosphere of my beloved city by the bay, San Francisco. Every chapter would elicit my response of I've been there, which is one of the reasons why I loved this book so much.
As with any good book, I hated for it to end, but hurry to the end I did, the suspense was killing me. I then turned it over to my 12 year old daughter to read. At first she was like, it's too slow, but with a little prodding, she quickly became engrossed and we had many a lively discussion on which actor would play who. She was so taken by the book, it became the subject of her final book project for her reading class in school. A great summer read and I can't wait till they turn this one into a movie!
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