Twenty years after her disappearance a young woman shows up at her parent's doorstep seemingly unaged. Her story of what happened to her is straight out of Thomas the Rhymer or La Belle Dame sans Merci and everyone thinks she is either lying or insane.One of my favorite elements in good fiction is ambiguity and this novel has plenty of it. There is the central ambiguity regarding Tara's story and the reader is free to choose whether to accept it at face value, or conclude that Tara is suppressing some terrible trauma underneath a delusion, or she could be trying to pull off a hoax. There is considerable ambiguity with the characters as individuals turn out to not be what they first appeared to be, both for good and bad. There is even ambiguity regarding the identity of the narrator of the story.
My favorite parts were the chapters dealing with Tara's unfortunate boyfriend whose life was completely destroyed first by her disappearance and then further when all the suspicion of the police, her family, and his friends is directed at him. Richie's plight reminded me of the fiance of the so-called "Runaway Bride" from several years ago. He was universally suspected of murdering his fiance until she turned up and admitted she got cold feet and tried to run off.