Product Description

Product Details

• Published on: 2006-11-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 260 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Two women in crisis learn important lessons about "life and death and the nature of love" in Braffet's brilliant second novel (after 2005's Jack and Josie). Anne Cassidy, a 48-year-old New Age devotee living in Sedona, Ariz., knows something major has gone wrong when her daughter, Miranda, a college dropout and aimless drifter currently in Pittsburgh, Pa., doesn't answer her calls and Randa's phone is later disconnected. After two months, Anne must face a mother's worst fear—that her daughter has vanished. Meanwhile, Randa has crashed her car and left it to start a new life after accepting a ride from "George," an odd stranger who's either a serial killer or a covert CIA operative. George drops her off in Lawrence Beach, Va., where she takes a chambermaid job at a cheap motel. At the end of the tourist season, Randa's reduced to living in a friend's van while female bodies continue to surface in the seaside community. In Pittsburgh, Anne hunts for clues to her daughter's disappearance and revisits the equally disturbing disappearance of Nick, her pilot husband, in 1984. Fluid prose, vivid characters and suspenseful twists lead to a hopeful denouement. Author tour. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Anne Cassidy and her daughter, Miranda, have not seen each other in three years nor spoken in more than three months. Their relationship fractured many years ago when Miranda's father died and Anne took her daughter from their home in Pittsburg to Arizona. Now that Miranda is an adult, she wants nothing to do with her mother--a mistake that may turn tragic. After Miranda has a car accident, a stranger named George picks her up at the side of the road. He drops her off in a small Virginia town and since no one knows she's missing, Miranda tries to forget her past. However, George keeps popping up at unusual times, and it is unclear if he is connected to the strange killings of young women. Both Anne and Miranda tell their sides of the story, allowing Braffet to flesh out their strained relationship. It is a story about the fragility of relationships as well as the secrets we keep and the lies we tell ourselves to get us through the pain of love and loss. Carolyn Kubisz
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Customer Reviews

An alternately thrilling and touching read
If you've read Braffet's first novel, Josie and Jack, her vivid prose and extraordinary knack for verbal and emotional illustration in Last Seen Leaving will come as no great surprise. ...Although it may be against the law of averages to have a relatively new author hit the nail so squarely on the head two times in a row.

If you're looking to get swept away by a marvelously written and unforgettable story, do yourself a favor and buy them both.

great read from a rising star author
Just finished reading "Last Seen Leaving," the new novel by Kelly Braffet and I want to say: it's terrific. Dark, smart, thrilling, it follows a young woman named Miranda whose father disappeared in a mysterious plane crash over South America. She herself is constantly on the run, running from her past, her fears, intimacy...and possibly, a serial killer. This is a book about the secrets we keep from each other and ourselves, sometimes out of love, sometimes out of fear. Can't recommend this book highly enough!

A stylish, provocative thriller
Wow! Someone just drank a big bottle of Genius and her name is Kelly Braffet! I didn't think that she could possibly top her first novel, JOSIE AND JACK, a creepy love story that had style to burn.

But she did.

On the surface, LAST SEEN LEAVING is a thriller about Anne Cassidy's search for her lost daughter Miranda, and the dual story of Miranda's dangerous new life in a Maryland beach town. Dark subplots abound: a mysterious stranger with a fixation for Miranda; the still unresolved disappearance of Anne's husband, a CIA pilot; and a serial killer on the loose, who lovingly dyes the hair of his victims post-mortem. You just can't put it down.

But it's also a truly thought-provoking piece of work that asks all kinds of questions about identity, about the masks we wear, and the faces our loved ones show us. What a great book.