The Lost Ones

At the start of Kamal’s convoluted debut, Vancouver research assistant Nora Watts meets with Lynn and Everett Walsh about their missing 15-year-old daughter, Bonnie. Nora assumes that the couple want to hire her boss’s PI firm to locate the girl, but, as it turns out, Nora is Bonnie’s birth mother, and the Walshes think that Bonnie is trying to find her. Nora tries to put the matter from her mind, as Bonnie was born after a brutal rape that left Nora comatose for six months, but she can’t stop thinking about the teen and eventually decides to conduct her own search. Nora quickly discovers that she and the Walshes aren’t the only ones hunting for Bonnie. While Kamal uses Nora’s investigation to spotlight important social issues such as homelessness, political corruption, and the mistreatment of Canada’s indigenous population, the book’s plot is unconvincing and overly dependent on coincidence. Nora is too idiosyncratic to feel real, and none of her relationships rings true, further sapping the tale of heft and verisimilitude. [em]Agent: Miriam Kriss, Irene Goodman Agency. (July) [/em]