Before She Disappeared

Frankie Elkin is, in her own words, a scrawny, middle-aged white woman. She is a drifter, an excellent bartender, and an alcoholic. For the past decade, Frankie has devoted her life to finding missing persons. Usually people who are minorities, whose cases have gone cold. She has found 14 of those people.

Now Frankie finds herself in Mattapan, an ethnic neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. The area is the home to many residents of Haitian descent, and many new Haitian refugees who came to the U.S. after the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. This time, Frankie is searching for a Haitian teenager named Angelique Badeau. Eleven months ago the teenager went missing. Not your average missing teen, Angelique is fifteen years old, a top student, a loyal sister and friend, who was studying hard to get into medical school.

Frankie gets herself a job in Stoney’s Bar and rents a room above the bar which she shares with the sitting tenant, a feral and hostile cat named Piper.

Noticeably the only white face in the area, and certainly in the bar, Frankie works hard to become accepted in order that she can spend her free hours searching for Angelique.

Frankie is courageous, lonely, wise-cracking, driven by her demons, and most of all…. broken.

MY THOUGHTS

Frankie Elkin is a one in a million character. So unique, so broken, and so very memorable. I loved her and was sad when I turned the last page on her story.

That being said, she could, potentially return in further books (she said with her fingers and toes crossed). However, I want Frankie to stop drifting and stay in Boston, working at Stoney’s bar, going to AA meetings with Charlie, chewing the fat with Viv, and teaming up with Boston Police Detective Lotham.

I adored the writing in this book. The dreadful and disturbing circumstances which were lightened with levity and sarcasm. This is my very first Lisa Gardner book, and now I want to read her previous work.

The book brings home the truism that people all over are really the same. Regardless of their social standing, ethnicity, religion, or other persuasion, people all want enough food to eat, a safe place to live, someone to care for, someone who cares for them.

This novel also spoke to the plight of illegal immigrants in this modern world. It told of inner city teens striving to better themselves and their situations in any way they can.

I adored this book much more than I expected to. It is all Frankie Elkin’s fault.

Highly recommended!