It takes Laurel some time to learn to love her daughter Hannah, who she wished had died instead of Ellie. Hannah seems to know this and the loss of her sister is doubly hard, highlighting how imperfect she was, as well as little she was loved by her mother.
Her son Jake finds a surrogate family with his new girlfriend with whom they are planning on having a family of their own. Each tries to find a way to cope. Like his son, Paul has met a new partner, complete with step children. He has stepped not a new life. Everyone seems to have moved on, except for Laurel. But that was before she met a man.
Floyd Dunn, is the person who has the key to unlocking the prison that Laurel has made for herself: a prison of grief and pain. The reader is brought along with our protagonist as we move from doubt, to acceptance, as we want only good things for this woman who has suffered so much. And then, we discover, that Floyd’s life is just as complicated as her own and it emerges that Paul has the key to a lot more than the present.
Like Laurel, we are sceptical of everyone. We are concerned for her at every step. We follow her as she plunges into a relationship with someone who may or not be the very man who has all the answers - the answers that will tear them apart.
For much of the book - the scenes written in the present - Jewell uses the present tense to create an immediacy that is gripping. It demands our attention and the pace of this book is part of its charm - you will complete it in a couple of sittings. It leaves the reader in a whirl, swept along by the short chapters, just as Laurel is swept along in the romance that will upend her life forever.
Jewell also uses the past tense, when the narrator switches to Noelle, who narrates her story in the first person. This too is impactful - her speech patterns and quirky phrasing are so idiosyncratic, that she is chillingly believable as the psychopath that she is. While the male characters play their part, it is the depiction of the the women in the story; Ellie, Laurel and Noelle, who hold the reader in their grip and never let us go until the final page. In fact, the ‘She’ of the title could refer to any if not all of the female protagonists who all disappear in their way during the course of the book.
Our desire to know the full story is what makes this book such a page-turner. We wonder if we ever find out what happened to Ellie, the girl who we care so deeply about from the very first page. The lost girl demands our attention and we long, we long, we long for her story to end well.
In ‘Then She Was Gone’, Jewell has written a book that discusses how life can go on, despite the unbearable happening. How can you continue to live your life knowing that your beautiful, ‘golden’ daughter has simply disappeared into thin air. Jewell considers this and ultimately comes to the conclusion that there is always space for love; for Laurel’s husband Paul, and his new wife, for her son and his partner, for her daughter and the mystery man in her life, and even, surprisingly so, for Laurel. Amid all the hatred, the darkness, and the rage, there is love - love for Laurel’s missing daughter, for her other children, for her lover, but more than anything, love for herself.
