Safe and Sound

Safe and Sound by Laura McHugh, 288 pages

Amelia and Kylee were safely asleep upstairs when their cousin Grace (who had been babysitting them) went missing several years ago. Other than a smear of blood in the kitchen, there's been no trace of her in their chunk of rural Missouri, nor anywhere else they can think of. Now, as teenagers, the sisters are torn between doing as Grace wished and leaving town to seek their future elsewhere, or staying in tiny Beaumont, where their aunt keeps hoping for some sign of Grace. When a body is discovered nearby, the sisters start their own investigation into Grace's disappearance in the hopes that they'll find some closure and be able to move on with their lives.

This is just about the slowest burning thriller I've come across, and it's a fairly depressing one. That said, the characters are well-realized, and the only thing that keeps me from fully recommending this one is the end, which gets a bit wonky, given the lead-up to it. Still, not a bad book, as long as you're OK with a stripped-bare version of rural Missouri.

Stoner

Stoner / John Williams, 278 p.

William Stoner was raised by hardworking farmers in rural Missouri at the turn of the nineteenth century.  He makes his way to the University at Columbia (not, apparently, called Mizzou at the time) and has an epiphany of sorts about literature and learning.  Effectively, he falls in love, and it's that love that keeps him in Columbia, studying and then teaching, for the rest of his life.  Other relationships, to his wife, daughter, lover, and friends could almost be called unconsummated.  The novel questions where the fault for this lies, and whether it matters.  A beautiful, simple text that asks the deepest possible questions.