Story for the Week
They say home is where the heart is, so my heart clearly resides in the Chicago metropolitan area. I wasn’t born where I live, but that’s only because Dad was stationed in California in the Air Force. When he completed his service four months after I was born, we moved home.
A 2022 study by the U.S. Census Bureau and Harvard University determined that 80% of young adults live within 100 miles of where they grew up. Nearly 60% live within 10 miles. I went to college less than 40 miles from home, and the absolute furthest I’ve lived was just under 60 miles. If I really wanted to venture into the 100-mile territory, I could still choose between Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, or Michigan. But right now? I live a whopping 2.5 miles from the home I grew up in, and I’m ok with that because this is home.
Even my siblings fit the demographic. My brother’s family lives about 15 miles from where we grew up (about 20 miles for his wife to her childhood home). My sister…less than 30. And we stopped being young adults a long time ago. 😉
But what about the “nomads”…the people who move far far far far away from home? Dennis grew up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. When he came to the U.S., he lived in New Jersey and eventually in New York, which is where he lived when we met. Chicago to Trinidad (airport to airport) is almost 2,700 miles. And while Dennis loved living in the States (New York more than Chicago), he still considered Trinidad home.
One of his brothers moved from Trinidad to Toronto—2,500 miles from home. He has a cousin who also grew up in Trinidad, moved to New York and then to California—more than 4,000 miles from home. Both go back to Trinidad pretty regularly (usually for Carnival). Yet another cousin grew up in London and moved to Nova Scotia and eventually to Toronto—3,500 miles from home. And then there’s my step-daughter who moved from New Jersey to Hawaii (almost 5,000 miles) to Washington state (2,300 miles). 😲 Dennis had family in a number of countries, but I can’t think of a single family member on my side who lives outside the U.S.
Dennis desperately wanted to move to Florida when he was alive, and we talked about it a few times. I was never completely on board because my entire family is here. One time, Corinne overheard us talking and started crying because she didn’t want to move away. That permanently ended those discussions because Dennis would do (or not do) just about anything for Corinne. One of the things we realized is that the first move of thousands of miles was the hardest for Dennis. After that, he had already done it, so the second time, it wasn’t as difficult mentally and emotionally.
Besides not wanting to leave my family, I also love the area we’re in. Chicago is a beautiful city with a lot to offer, so there’s no reason to go anywhere far. Corinne, on the other hand, loves to travel and really loves New York. She plans to study musical theater in college, so Chicago is actually a great place for her to be. But I could totally see her living in New York someday…even if her heart stays in Chicago. 💖
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for Safe and Sound by Laura McHugh
304 pages
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication Date: April 23, 2024
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.
Publisher’s Description
In a town no one ever leaves, there are only so many places to hide.
As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving blood all over the kitchen. Scrappy and driven, Grace, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and working at the meatpacking plant, had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better.
Now, as their own high school graduation looms, Amelia and Kylee dream about fleeing Beaumont, but the likelihood of that happening seems as low as that of Grace being found. When human remains are discovered in town, the sisters think they finally know who took Grace—but as they dig deeper into her past, they unearth long-buried secrets and a growing list of suspects.
Amelia and Kylee vow to find Grace, dead or alive. But as they draw closer to the truth and slip further into danger, they question how far someone would go to put a woman in her place, or to cover up a crime. The answer is worse than they could have imagined, and in the end, it won’t just be Grace they’re trying to save—they’ll have to fight for their lives.
************
Main Characters:
- Amelia – graduated high school early, works full-time as a waitress at a Waffle House, trying to save up money to leave the small town of Beaumont, Missouri, once her sister graduates high school
- Kylee – Amelia’s younger sister, not as invested in leaving Beaumont as Amelia
- Grace – Amelia and Kylee’s older cousin, disappeared six years ago, she was babysitting Amelia and Kylee who were sleeping upstairs, and there was blood splattered all over the kitchen
- Shannon – Amelia and Kylee’s mother, works as a dancer at a local strip club
- Elsie – Grace’s mother, holds a vigil every year on the anniversary of Grace’s disappearance
- Levi – Grace’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance, the current year is the first vigil he has missed
- Tyson – Levi’s older brother
- Jimmy – Elsie’s live-in boyfriend, 20 years younger than she is, only a few years older than Grace
Trigger warning:child sexual abuse
Grace Crow intended to leave Beaumont, Missouri, for good when she went missing. Already offered a full scholarship to college, she regularly told Amelia and Kylee to stick together and to get out before it was too late. Grace disappeared before she got the chance to leave, so Amelia takes her advice seriously. She graduated high school early so she could start working to save money. She regularly reminds Kylee to keep her grades up and focus on school so they can leave as soon as she graduates and, as Grace always told them, never look back.
When human bones turn up at a construction site, everyone’s minds immediately turn to Grace. Has she finally been found? It’s pretty early in the book that we find out the bones are not Grace’s, so not a spoiler, but they seem to be the impetus for Amelia to start digging into who the bones belong to, are they related to Grace, what really happened the night Grace went missing.
This story moves pretty slowly, and I don’t think that’s a positive here. A high school senior vanishes, blood all over the kitchen, no one saw or heard anything, and no clues to her whereabouts remain. Boyfriends, teachers, neighbors, her aunt’s strip club clientele…literally anyone could be a suspect. And the ending comes with a great unexpected twist. I certainly never came close to guessing what happened. But the police don’t seem to be investigating the case after all these years, and honestly, I have to believe they could have solved this if they had tried even just a little bit.
Based on the twist and the subject matter, I would have expected this to be categorized as suspense or a thriller. It’s general fiction, however, and I agree with that categorization. The narration is dry up until the end. Amelia spends so much time talking about how Grace always told them to get out while they can and that’s been her focus. I feel like there was potential for this to be so much better, but it fell flat…until the twisty part at the end, which got so convoluted that you wish the reveal came sooner so the rest of the book would have been a little more exciting.
I toyed with a lower star rating, but this DID really surprise me. Also, an epilogue would have been ideal for this one. There are so many things that require resolution (see spoilers), but sadly, we are left hanging.
***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***
So I can’t really lay out why this book falls short of a better rating without spoilers, so here they are.
Three women/girls have gone missing in this small town, and there seems to be zero sense of urgency to solve the crimes. First was a young girl who Shannon and Elsie’s brother Norman took a liking to. The man is a serial pedophile and Elsie’s current boyfriend has pictures to prove he was abusing Grace when she was younger. Instead of telling Elsie, he hides the pictures in a desk…I guess because Elsie was so devoted to her brother that it would be devastating to her. More devastating than the fact that her daughter is gone?!
Turns out, Norman had also abused a girl named Annalise before Grace. He has her name tattooed near his privates, which is how Grace figures it out. Annelise’s uncle suspected Norman but could never prove anything. And at some point Norman had killed her and then buried her in the concrete of Elsie’s pool that he put in while she was gone one weekend.
So Norman is a suspect in Grace’s disappearance, but we find out later that Grace actually killed him by accident in an effort to protect Amelia and Kylee from his abuse. Tyson helped her dispose of his body and belongings, and everyone just assumed he had left town because that’s what he did pretty regularly. He’d leave for months or years at a time, didn’t carry a cell phone because he didn’t want people to be able to reach him, and he would blow back into town to stay with Elsie who doted on him, oblivious to the fact that he was abusing her daughter.
The bones found at the very beginning of the book are from a stripper who had worked with Shannon and just disappeared one day. It was assumed that she left town so never investigated, but I would think with the other two missing, people might start to get suspicious.
Alan manages the Waffle House where Amelia works, which is also where Grace worked. He’s a total creep, and his cook Javi knows it, but Javi does nothing about it because Alan regularly threatens to have him deported for using a fake ID to get his job. Alan steals meat from the deep freezer and sells it as a side hustle, so he has loads of cash in his home freezer, but apparently he is neither a kidnapper nor a killer. He’s just a creep who never gets his comeuppance.
I suspected both Alan and Javi at one point, but they’re just distractions.
Then we also have to look at Levi and Tyson. Both are pretty heavy drinkers. Levi is quiet, while Tyson is more outgoing. What we come to find out is that Tyson loved Grace as well. Jealous but protective of his brother, after he helps Grace get rid of Norman’s body, he tells her that if she leaves Beaumont (and Levi), he’s going to tell everyone that she killed Norman. They argue, he’s drunk with a knife in his hand, and he accidentally slices her arm open right along an artery.
Since the hospital is too far away, he takes her to their family cabin. His mother Velda had worked previously as an ER nurse, and he figures she can help. Grace is fragile and drifts into a coma. She gets progressively weaker, and Velda decides that it’s too late to go to the police. But just when Velda thinks Grace is about to die, Grace opens her eyes. So for the past six years, Velda has been taking care of the practically comatose Grace at their cabin. How the police never went to the cabin since Grace and Levi were a couple, and how they never discovered her is a mystery to me. All Kylee had to do was look in a window.
At that point, Velda tells Tyson they can’t ever let Amelia and Kylee leave. Tyson starts to choke Kylee, Levi shows up, and shoots Tyson with a crossbow, and then says he’ll bring Grace out so that Amelia and Kylee can leave with her. So for six years he has said nothing, but once they discover her, he kills his brother to let all three of them leave?
And where do Amelia, Kylee, and Grace end up? We have no idea!! The last chapter is them driving out of town after leaving Velda’s cabin. So Grace is alive, several people are dead, and Amelia and Kylee aren’t even talking about where they will go to get Grace some medical help…or how they’ll explain everything that happened. They’re just driving out of town.
A few answers would be appreciated here.
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