The Child Finder: A Novel

It’s certainly not something that will go down as one of the best literary works of our generation, but if you need something with a powerful message, beautiful writing and a good story, this is for you. Especially because you can get hooked and flip through quickly.

Breathtaking- loved the historical & natural setting& the depth of Gods love expressed for his little children& animal creation. Found this title on Jane Kirkpatricks blog- my fav author of the best historical fiction ever! The Child Finder will be a beacon of hope for many families who have survived & thrived& lessons for all.

Never lost my attention. Although the story was graphic, it handled some issues, that could have been very hard to read, in a way that allowed me to move on rather than linger over the horror of what was happening to the child.

**Spoiler Alert**

In the face of insupportable circumstances, people's brains can do some remarkable things. One category of miraculous safety mechanisms is the array of dissociative disorders, which would perhaps better be called dissociative deliverances. "The Child Finder" proposes the revolutionary idea that the parallel lives and selves that flower in the harsh soil of suffering are valuable and real and mighty, and that the most empowered path to healing includes embracing not only those phenomena but the suffering that made them possible and necessary. This is not a story of overcoming suffering: it is a story of owning and honoring it.

This is the radical underpinning of a story which might be mistaken for a thriller. And you can read it as a thriller, if you like...or as a hymn to the dangerous beauty of Oregon, or as a love story, or as a crime procedural. And it is those things, as well. "The Child Finder" has several of the elements that made "The Enchanted" so compelling: a hurting, dauntless female protagonist whose impossible calling is nevertheless more possible than learning to be vulnerable to love; a man who sees her and wants to be what she needs; a character who makes prison into a sanctuary in order to survive; a character so innocent and yet so dangerously broken that the only fitting resolution is his death at the hands of a compassionate executioner. "The Child Finder" is at its most astonishing in its obvious narrative when it challenges the reader to extraordinary compassion and shows the world through the eyes of a person who has done something terribly wrong for reasons over which he has no agency.

And it is even more astonishing in its less-obvious narrative, the spirit beneath its living body, the idea that we save ourselves not by turning away from our defining traumas in shame, not by denying who and what we've been, but by making it our own. This is what happened. It isn't your fault, but if life gives you the equivalent of a huge sack of knives to carry, and you're tasked to carry it forever, you can either cut and stab yourself until you bleed to death, or--to borrow an image from another story--you can construct the Iron Throne. It may be dangerous for other people to sit in it with you until you show them how, but--it's a beautiful thing.

"The Child Finder" is full of edges honed so fine that they can split a hair. But there's a safe place for you to sit. Take up residence there for a few hours, and see who you are when you stand up again. See what you're carrying. What will you construct? What story will you tell?

Abducted on a family trip for Christmas trees, Madison, created her alter-ego, the Snow Girl, to combat the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse perpetrated upon her, by the former, abducted and abused, boy of seven. The boy, who is now a grown man, lost , auditory and verbally impaired boy, Brian Owens. Sadly, the abusee became the abuser. Naomi used her investigative skills to locate, Madison three years later and eagerly returned her to her distraught parents. Naomi also located the missing, Danforth baby, however the outcome was not a joyous one. This subplot illustrated how law enforcement treats the mentally challenged and the economically disenfranchised portions of our society. The Danforth baby should have been discovered earlier, saving its life.

Interesting novel based on pedophilia, child abduction, law enforcement in minority communities, and rural life, with an uncanny amount of confusing flashbacks used to narrate the novel in two first persons and omnipotent third person points of views. Character development was well done, and the cold, barren descriptive passages of the Oregon Mountains projected the inhospitable, slowly decay communities surrounding the mountain's foothills and forest with such accuracy and despair. Mrs. Cottle' s death seemed to pull Naomi and Jerome together, like they were meant to be, as she, Naomi, slowly recovers her memories and begin the search for her origins and her sister. I only hope she finds her and alleviate her guilty of leaving her behind during their escape.
01/10/18

This was an incredibly well written mystery that made me wasn't to keep reading and also an incredibly difficult story to read. That once was lost now is found and there are innocents who become monsters. This book will make you think.

Our book club was reading The Child Finder, because I had a road trip I downloaded to my Kindle and got the audio version too. My daughter in college listened with me and she enjoyed it as much as I did.