Layers

The Vanished Girl by Kathleen McGurl is a powerful and heartbreaking dual timeline novel that gripped me from the start.

The action is set in the summer of 1976 and in 2024. For those of us of a certain age, we remember the summer of ’76 as being glorious – long, hot days. For the characters they were, eight, twelve, and nearly fourteen-years-old. Theirs was a summer of freedom. “We were giddy with freedom and endless possibilities. Friends, a picnic, our bikes… We could go anywhere.” The reader ‘feels’ the freedom and remembers their own childhood in the summer of ’76. Days of adventures with friends, no phones to distract. The summer stretched out endlessly, creating bonds and happy memories until – the girl vanished.

Nearly fifty years later, the friends are re-united. “Inside, I’m still that kid.” Old bonds re-attach as the years fall away. Feelings of guilt return as everyone wonders if they could have done more.

The intervening years have seen a life being plied with guilt upon guilt. A life spiralled downwards. Returning to her childhood village, a character hopes she will heal.

Re-connection with childhood friends creates the original strong bonds.

The modern reader is horrified at the attitudes to those with mental health issues in 1976. They are shunned at best, persecuted at worst – by the adults, who hunt in packs. It is shameful. Only the children see the kind, gentle heart that beats beneath the skin of a nineteen-year-old man.