“What if” sets the imagination soaring and compels writers to pick up their pens or pull out their laptops. It’s what got me writing the novel When Things Go Missing.

It started from a dark place. I was a mother struggling to hold her family together and feeling helpless to help those I loved. Overwhelmed and despondent, I had this wild, reckless urge to run away from it all. But how could I abandon those I loved? Those who depended upon me to hold the family together, to be there for them? Would they fall apart without me?

I shared this dilemma—this wild reckless urge—with other mothers. Every single one nodded her head with empathy. “Yes, I’ve been there too,” they told me. “I know that feeling.”

It was a revelation. And a relief. I wasn’t alone in feeling this way.

And so the seed was sown.

The novel I began writing was not about me or mine, but about all mothers everywhere who struggle to hold their families together, who sometimes have that wild, reckless wish to run away, but can’t because they love their families too much.

But “what if” the mother DID run away? What would happen then? Can letting go of the people we love, who depend upon us, allow them to grow stronger on their own? Can we trust them to survive and even thrive in our absence? Or will they fall apart without us?

Yet, the story wasn’t the mother’s to tell. It wasn’t about her. It was about those she left behind: How would they feel? How would they cope? How would they fill the empty holes in their lives?

I didn’t know the answers to those questions. I wrote the novel to find out. The characters generously revealed to me how each of their lives unfolded.

When Things Go Missing is a Prodigal Son kind of story that includes a prodigal daughter and prodigal father as well.

I dedicated the novel “To all families who fall apart and struggle to find their way home again.”

And followed with this epigraph: I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.—Jeremiah 31:3

Here’s the back cover description:

What happens when the one person holding a family together mysteriously disappears?

How well do we really know anyone, especially those we love the most?

One day Fran heads toward the grocery store and keeps going till she reaches the tip of South America, leaving an empty hole in the lives of her family: Kay, a cranky archaeology student who adores her mother but distrusts men in general, her father and brother in particular. Cal, a heroin addict living at home, left with a father he fears and no means of support; and Walter, a devoted husband but distant father, who tracks his wife’s journey across the continent with pushpins on a map.

Adding to the mystery of the mother’s disappearance are the “gifts” she sends her family: The elated messages she leaves on Kay’s phone, but never when she’s there to pick up. The strange photographs she sends Cal, who studies them like hieroglyphs he must decipher to save her and himself. The credit card bills she leaves Walter, allowing him to continue caring for her, until he undertakes his own journey northward. How they fill the missing pieces in their lives to make their family whole again creates the heart of this novel.

When Things Go Missing is a masterful exploration of loss, loyalty, and knotty, dysfunctional families, told through the viewpoints of Kay, Cal, and Walter. It reveals the subtle and dramatic ways addiction affects the bonds that hold a family together. This heartfelt meditation on family is wrapped up in a propulsive page-turner that you cannot help getting swept up in.

You can read more about this novel on my website, including an excerpt and early reader reviews.

If When Things Go Missing sounds like something you would enjoy, it’s now available for pre-order at Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes & Noble.