ONE PUZZLING AFTERNOON

Narrator Elizabeth Sastre adopts a gentle voice for this complex, sometimes puzzling, mystery about the disappearance of Lucy Theddle in 1951. The story is told in 2018 by Edie Green, an octogenarian with aphasia and dementia who was Lucy's best friend. Aided by her intrepid, cheerful granddaughter, Amy, soft-voiced Edie follows sketchy clues plumbed from her memories. In alternating chapters, 15-year-old Edie recounts the events leading up to Lucy's disappearance. Sastre's tone rarely varies between Edie at 15 and Edie at 82, forcing listeners to pay close attention to the story's clues while remembering the current time frame and wondering what happened years earlier. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2023]