The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon (2015) 353 pages

In a small English village in 1976, a neighbor goes missing. Unable to believe Margaret Creasy is dead, her husband is turning their house upside down in order to figure out what caused her to leave. It becomes evident that something happened ten years ago that caused a stir in the neighborhood before he was married. He can't sleep, but instead roams the neighborhood at night, stopping everywhere she used to go. He fears that someone told his wife about this event, causing her to leave. 

Two ten-year-old girls—Gracie and Tilly—often pretend not to listen so that adults will talk more freely when they're around. They decide to spend the summer, which is an especially sweltering one, trying to figure out what happened to Mrs. Creasy. When they ask the vicar how to stop a person from disappearing, he says they need to find God. The girls decide to look for God, working their way through the neighborhood, asking everyone, even going to the house at #11 The Avenue, where they've been told not to go.

Through periodic flashbacks from ten years ago, a picture starts forming of a village mob mentality, what happened, and how it affected the villagers for the next ten years. Sad but sweet, troubling but uplifting.