OCTOBER 2017 - AudioFile
Naomi is a private investigator with a passion for finding missing children. In her current case she sets out to find Madison Culver, "The Snow Child," who disappeared three years earlier while her family was picking out a Christmas tree. Narrator Alyssa Bresnahan uses a fittingly solemn tone for a bleak and disturbing story. When Denfeld's story changes its point of view, Bresnahan’s delivery makes the shifts clear. She poetically delivers Denfeld's prose with meaning and a tone of vulnerability and recounts the pasts of both Naomi and Madison hauntingly. The suspense of the story is magnified by her impressive narration. The story line, the connections between characters, and the compelling ending will not disappoint. D.Z. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
07/17/2017
An investigator seeks missing children in the remote reaches of an Oregon forest in this intense novel by Denfeld (The Enchanted). Private investigator Naomi cannot remember anything in her life before running in terror through a dark strawberry field as a child. Now in her late 20s, the titular “child finder” carries the burdens of a solitary career finding missing children. Her newest case—the disappearance of five-year-old Madison Culver three years ago somewhere in a glacier-studded national forest in rural Oregon—collides with a time of sickness and loneliness within her little remaining family. Her foster brother, Jerome, who suffers from a war injury, must care for the woman who raised them, Mrs. Cottle, while Naomi works. As Naomi follows clues, her lucid dreams become clearer, and the voice of an unnamed child tells her own story as the search for Madison unfolds. Using multiple voices, Denfeld takes an innovative approach to dealing with the pain of trauma, taking moments of darkness and frailty and probing them in heartbreaking, surprising ways. Naomi is a broken but ethical protagonist who always holds out hope: for the children yet to be found, the adults searching for missing loved ones, and herself as she tries to overcome past traumas. The conclusion will leave readers breathless. (Sept.)
Erin Morgenstern
Rene Denfeld has a gift for shining bright light in dark places. The Child Finder is a gorgeous, haunting gem of a novel. Raw and real yet wrapped in a fairy tale, as lovely and as chilling as the snow.
A.M. Homes
A darkly luminous story of resilience and the deeply human instinct for survival, for love. Blending the magical thinking of childhood, of fairy tales, dreams, memories and nightmares, The Child Finder is a terrifying and ultimately uplifting novel that demands to be consumed and then once inside you–lingers.
Library Journal
04/15/2017
Investigator Naomi is especially good at locating lost children because once upon a time she was lost herself. Now she's after Madison Culver, who vanished three years ago in Oregon's Skookum National Forest. Her search brings up bits and pieces of memory that promise to deliver something dark if they ever coalesce. Big in-house love; Denfeld's The Enchanted was an ALA Notable Book of the Year.
OCTOBER 2017 - AudioFile
Naomi is a private investigator with a passion for finding missing children. In her current case she sets out to find Madison Culver, "The Snow Child," who disappeared three years earlier while her family was picking out a Christmas tree. Narrator Alyssa Bresnahan uses a fittingly solemn tone for a bleak and disturbing story. When Denfeld's story changes its point of view, Bresnahan’s delivery makes the shifts clear. She poetically delivers Denfeld's prose with meaning and a tone of vulnerability and recounts the pasts of both Naomi and Madison hauntingly. The suspense of the story is magnified by her impressive narration. The story line, the connections between characters, and the compelling ending will not disappoint. D.Z. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
