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However, though it appears her conclusion is written, Marie is deeply worried about the rest of her book: "[Raintree] has no past that anybody, including me, has been able to find. This is not good news for a true crime writer with a book due on her editor's desk in two weeks." But when Ray escapes just after the verdict is read, Marie must accelerate her quest for Ray's actual and emotional origins. Her search has repercussions that lie far beyond the successful completion of her book; she alone can prevent Ray from killing again. Her questions, and their answers, will take her from Florida to the American heartland, from sunshine and palm trees to an unspeakable history of abduction and abuse.
In an intriguing and effective narrative device, Pickard alternates chapters of her "own" text with chapters from The Little Mermaid. This structural twinning hints at the plurality of experience, of the conflicting stories that we create to situate ourselves and others; in realizing that writers must sift through the truth, or truths, to create a coherent narrative, the reader must also sift through the sometimes dovetailing, sometimes elliptical relationship between Pickard's and Lightfoot's stories. The strategy is not wholly successful; at times Pickard introduces elements that lead nowhere, such as Marie's uneasy acceptance of her own parents' disappearance years before; at other times, an apparent impulse to accelerate the action serves only to accentuate gaping holes in the plot. But these are minor complaints; Pickard's novel is, in its quiet fashion, an appealing novelty at the intersection of truth and fiction. --Kelly Flynn
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