Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize "A magnificent debut filled with characters so vivid, strange, and richly imagined, you emerge feeling changed." —Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
In New York City, a girl called Lenora vanishes without a trace. Years earlier and miles upstate, Goldie, a wild, negligent mother, searches for a man to help raise her precocious son, Paul, who later discovers that the only way to save his soul is to run away. The Sweet Relief of Missing Children is a suspenseful novel about the power of running and the desire for reinvention. It explores the terror and transcendence of our most central experiences: childhood, parenthood, sex, love.
Sarah Braunstein is the author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and the Harvard Review. The recipient of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 prize, she lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches at Colby College.
