When Ronnie Eastman disappears from a small southern town in 1993, the residents start revealing their true characters, in Jones's transparent debut novel (after Girl Trouble, a short story collection). Ronnie's sister, Susanna, disappointed with her marriage and life, regrets not pursuing her teenage crush because of her father's racism. That crush, a local baseball star named Tony, is now a detective assigned to find Ronnie. Tony and Susanna's close proximity to each other for the first time in years brings the old feelings rushing back. Paralleling the story of the search is the story of Emily, a local teenager, awkward and teased, who finds a body a few days before Halloween. Emily is nursing her own crush, on a boy who just moved to the school, and rather than reporting her gruesome find, she uses it as a way to get closer to him. And Wyatt is a local factory worker, living a lonely life until he meets Sarah, a nurse he thinks he might be able to love. All of these lives connect through the search for Ronnie, with consequences for them all. Jones ties together the narratives effectively, cycling point-of-view between the three main players, but her characters are underdeveloped and there's little doubt about the identity of the killer. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents Inc. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Emily is a troubled 13-year-old, teased by the cutest boy in school and unable to rise above being the seventh-grade cipher. Her world is turned upside down when she stumbles across a body in the woods. Emily's teacher, Susanna, is worried about her problematic sister, Ronnie. Ronnie is a partier, a hard-drinking partier who loves a wild night out. But Susanna hasn't heard from Ronnie in weeks. Wyatt is an older man set in his ways who works at the local plant. All he has in his lonely life is his dog and his measly job. These characters and more all intersect in various ways under Jones's deft control, coalescing in a climactic ending. V-ERDICT This first novel by award-winning Jones (Girl Trouble) is going to be hot. In the vein of Gone Girl, last summer's runaway smash, Jones's tightly written Southern thriller will be one of spring's sizzling titles. Jones brilliantly weaves together story lines from unexpected angles. Her writing is fluid and she keeps a pace that will have readers lacing on their running shoes. And what a suspenseful, emotional, addictive run it is! Buy it now, read it now, share it now.-Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The residents of a small Kentucky town react to the disappearance of a local woman in this first novel by short story writer Jones (Girl Trouble, 2009). Emily Houchens, a lonely, deeply unhappy 13-year-old, finds a woman's dead body while walking in the woods near the working-class subdivision where her family lives. She decides not to tell anyone. Instead, she continues to visit the body, fantasizing that she is sharing her adventure with Christopher Shelton, a popular boy who was kind to her in the past but has turned cruel because her obvious crush makes him uncomfortable. At the same time, Susanna Mitchell, Emily's competent but insecure English teacher who has been defensively intimidated by Christopher's highly educated mother, becomes increasingly concerned that she hasn't heard from her hard-drinking, slightly disreputable older sister Ronnie for longer than usual. Her husband, Dale, a high school band coach who never approved of Ronnie, pooh-poohs her concern, but when Susanna stops by Ronnie's apartment, she finds worrisome evidence that Ronnie's sudden departure was not planned. The police detective assigned to Ronnie's case is Tony Joyce, an old classmate of Susanna's; she had a crush on him in high school (not unlike Emily's on Christopher) but was afraid to date him since he was black. As distraught as she is about Ronnie's disappearance, Susanna is also excited to work on the case with Tony, whose reappearance in her life underlines her dissatisfaction with her marriage to Dale. Yet Dale, who genuinely loves Susanna and their 4-year-old daughter, proves more self-aware than Susanna. Meanwhile, Emily's father takes in his co-worker Wyatt's dog after Wyatt suffers a heart attack, the culmination of the humiliation he experienced in a bar the night Ronnie went missing. And then there is Ronnie's own humiliation that night. There's not much suspense about the possible crime, but Jones builds intense tension surrounding the choices her flawed but compellingly sympathetic characters make as they fight against lonely isolation within the tight confines of small-town America.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Jones' debut novel, following her short story collection Girl Trouble (2009), follows the intersecting effects of one woman's disappearance on residents of a small Kentucky town. Middle-school teacher Susanna becomes concerned when she finds her older sister, Ronnie, is missing. The two share a complicated relationship Ronnie is a hard-partying factory worker while Susanna is a mild-mannered wife and mother. When Susanna launches a widespread search, it unexpectedly connects the lives of other townsfolk. Such as Emily, a tragic 13-year-old outcast whose daydreams may well reveal a dangerous secret, and downtrodden Wyatt, a fiftysomething blue-collar worker who begins to confront a lifelong emotional void after meeting and falling in love with a local nurse. Meanwhile, there's Tony, the failed athlete who has returned to his hometown as the detective assigned to Ronnie's case. As the search for Ronnie intensifies, Susanna begins to question the stagnancy in her own life, while other characters confront their perceptions of self-worth. Jones' well-crafted tale captures small-town nuances while exploring the individual psychologies of her characters and their struggles.--Strauss, Leah Copyright 2010 Booklist