cover image Vanished: Vanished

Vanished: Vanished

Mary McGarry Morris, Mary McGarry-Morris. Washington Square Press, $12 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-67943-9

In Morris's ``strong and painful'' first novel, Aubrey Wallace, a simple, good-hearted laborer on a Vermont road crew, falls for Dotty--cute, tarty, amoral and utterly freaked-out--who lures him away from his family to a wandering, criminal half-life on the road, with a kidnapped child in tow. ``The story drives inexorably to its cynical and wrenching climax, fueled on booze, drugs and human misery,'' noted PW. (Sept.)