Local Woman Missing

by Mary Kubica

Eleven years ago, six-year-old Delilah and her mother Meredith vanished from their peaceful suburban community. And they weren’t the first: another woman from their neighbourhood, Shelby, had recently gone missing too.

Eleven years later, Delilah reappears. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but her story is incoherent. Her father and younger brother Leo scarcely believe she’s the same girl, but DNA confirms her identity.

The story unfolds in two timelines—now and eleven years ago—and is told from the point of view of several individuals: Delilah’s (now), her mother’s (11 years ago), her brother’s (now), and Kate, their next-door neighbor (both now and 11 years ago).  As we watch events unfold, we know that there is a point where something terrible is going to happen—or, seen from the present, did happen—but we don’t know what it was. The story relentlessly moves toward (and from) that moment.

After much suspense and several twists, we do finally find out what happened, in an ending that packs a surprise.

Mary Kubica grew up in Ohio, where she still lives. She studied history and American literature at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She taught high school history for a few years, then left to raise a family—and to write, though her husband was the only one who knew she was writing a novel.

Her path to getting published was a long and bumpy one. She began work on her first novel in 2005, after her daughter was born. She spent five years writing that novel (in the meantime having a second child, a son). It then took her another two years to find an agent. That agent was successful in landing her a two-book publishing deal—and Kubica’s writing career was finally launched, with The Good Girl appearing in 2014.

The Good Girl hit the ground running: it almost immediately began garnering awards and shot up on the bestseller list. In 2015 Kubica followed with Pretty Baby, another bestseller. She hasn’t looked back: she has brought out a new novel nearly every year since then (2019 was the exception).

She has become known for suspenseful books that are both plot-driven and character-driven. Local Woman Missing is Kubica’s seventh novel. Her books have now sold over two million copies worldwide.

She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two children.

 [Click here to sign up to my book club — I’ll send you notices of new reviews when I post them.]