Lost

On a cold January morning, Susan leaves her husband alone for a few minutes and returns to find him gone. He has Alzheimer's, and he has wandered alone into a frigid landscape with no sense of home or direction.

The massive search for her husband brings Susan together with Jeff, a search-and-rescue expert and social worker preoccupied with his young wife's betrayal. In Jeff's care is Corey, a young boy rendered mute and abandoned by his family after setting a fire in which his older brother was killed.

As the temperature drops and the search and rescue effort builds towards a startling climax, each of the three reflects on their life choices as they struggle with haunting and persistent questions: how am I responsible? What more could I have done?

With her stark, beautiful prose and extraordinary insight into the human conscience and heart, Alice Lichtenstein has crafted a fiercely eloquent and emotionally suspenseful novel about the lengths we will go to take care of someone and the unfathomable ways that even the simplest of choices can reverberate throughout a life.