Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

Vanishing Acts

Jodi Picoult

Atria, Mar 2005, $26.00, 448 pp.

ISBN: 0743454545

In New Hampshire, Delia Hopkins and her dog Greta work as a great team helping the police find missing people, mostly children. Every time she and Greta succeed in reuniting a mother and child, Delia reflects on her own life raised by her father since her mother died in a car accident when she was three. She also always ponders how she would react if her beloved child Sophie vanished. Though engaged to her daughter's father, Delia raises her daughter mostly with the help of her sixty-year-old dad Andrew, who runs a senior-citizens' home.

The relationship between father and daughter that seemed perfect for over three decades collapses instantly when Arizona police arrest and have Andrew extradited to Phoenix on kidnapping charges; the victim ironically is Delia. She learns that her mother Elsie still lives and that her father abducted her when she was three because he insists she was an alcoholic dangerous to their child. Delia meets her mother, who is a sober, caring healer while her dad's tale has inconsistencies; she wonders whether the truth will surface in court?

The changing perspectives as each of the key players take turns as the lead provides an intriguing look at what is truth as the audience will observe the same incident interpreted differently, which leads to reality seemingly shifting. The storyline is fast-paced, but character driven and filled with angst. Though sidebars like the prison scene add excitement that seems unnecessary to a fabulous thriller that grips the audience in and out of the courtroom wondering whose point of view will ultimately be accepted as fact.

Harriet Klausner