This story revolves around the obsessive thoughts of a group of high school boys surrounding the disappearance of their sixteen year old classmate Nora. The boys imagine several scenarios over what happened to Nora that Halloween night and the possibilities grow as they age into their forties.

The premise of the story is intriguing as is the weaving of the events of their lives as the boys grow into men. What holds them together is this common event in their lives.

Here's where the book fell terribly short for me. The entire book is written as a narrative by one of the guys. You never know his name. A narrative approach may have worked, however the author had so many characters going on over the span of 20+ years, so there was essentially no character development that went deeper than surface level. This made it impossible for me to connect with and care about any of them. Also, over this 20+ years, why is this group of guys still so incredibly pre-occupied with Nora's dissapearance. It would be understandable for their to be lingering thoughts, but obsession?

Another area of difficulty was that the author seemed to find a way to throw in nearly every tragic event possible, rape, molestation, the early death of a parent, terroist bombing, etc. Instead of being a book about the collective musings over the missing Nora, it was a bombardement of the worst of society.

I enjoyed the concept of the book, but not the execution.