The Child Finder: A Novel

This is a beautifully written and pretty wonderful novel. The two major characters, one a twenty-something and the other an eight year old, are or have been victims of sexual predators. In very different ways both find the inner strength to survive and to retain an inner core of self. The elder is now a "child finder" while the younger is a taken child. This book is far more a celebration of those who survive than it is an elegy for those who don't. The child finder has had quite a success rate in the searches for missing, presumably taken, children she has undertaken; and, as a result, she has a growing list of pleading requests from distraught parents begging for her help. She is more successful than law enforcement because of her empathy for the child, the dedication she brings to the search--devoting month after month to the single task-- and her ability (pardon the cliche) to think outside the box. This book is not critical of law enforcement. The example we are given is entirely admirable. But how often is law enforcement allowed to concentrate month after month on a single case? But she will. The book mentions one of her previous successes, the finding of a boy who had been missing for eight years. Only she, of all the law enforcement who have looked for the child, thinks to consult the original blueprints of the school where he was last seen. This is pretty much a definition of thinking outside the box. In the current case she alone among searchers finds the original land grants in the neighborhood of where the child disappears, and she along searches out each of those old, original sites for a place in which a child could be hidden. An earlier reviewer suggested that she had some unexplained arcane ability that explained her success. I disagree; it is an unending patience and a willingness to keep on keeping on which explain her success. This book obviously tackles very ugly topics--pedophilia and its victims, the victim who grows into a predator himself because he has simply never learned any other way of acting--but it does so with tact; there are no brutal and sickening scenes of child rape here. This is an author who believes her readers know what happens when a sexual predator takes a child. But above all, this is a story of those who survive; and the reader can share in the enormous accomplishment, especially considering the magnitude of what they have survived. One thought I'd like to add: A previous reviewer found the book poorly written. I disagree entirely. The two examples that person quotes are thoughts taken from a person's mind. I think that very few people monitor their thoughts for grammatical accuracy, and I found both examples utterly realistic in term of what a person in that situation might think. Be that as it may, I thought this a very fine book that I'd recommend to adults without hesitation.

Mesmerizing story. You want to know if a child will be found, if found will she be alive, and how did she disappear? The passages involving the perpetrator are beyond upsetting, but then anyone who has read stories in the news about what happens to taken children knows it can be incredibly horrifying. It's an insight into a sick mind. And the sick power they can hold over the hostage. I always enjoy a story that goes back and forth between characters, makes it more interesting. I really like this author's writing style. She doesn't waste unneeded words. I also liked the descriptions of the Pacific N.W.surroundings, I tasted the sky and snow and ice and sun and moon and stars. I was educated in the Oregon Trail's history of fur traders and trappers. I usually find that including passages I've highlighted along the way in my reviews illustrates much better what I would attempt to say: "Her entire life she had been running from terrifying shadows she could no longer see-and in escape she ran straight into life. In the years since, she had discovered the sacrament of life did not demand memory. Like a leaf that drank from the morning dew, you didn't question the morning sunrise or the sweet taste on your mouth. You just drank." "There is no census here, Ranger Dave had said, but Naomi suspected otherwise. There was always a census-whether written in the scratchy pad of a farm boss checking off the field hands, or recorded in the head of an old woman who can recite the complete genealogy of every single resident going back three generations. The key was finding it." "She was the kind of helper Naomi had often met over the years: the town historian, gossip, and librarian all rolled into one. Naomi, naturally friendly had learned to appreciate these helpers, and show her gratitude." "You got to remember, Oregon was built on timber and trapping. It was fur traders and trappers that created the Oregon Trail. When the Homestead Act came along, some thought, Hey, my own piece of land to live off. They weren't thinking how hard it would be." "The forest was alive. Bear hair on a tree. A sky like an upside-down gold pan raining sleet that left stars in her hair." "He frowned at her, and in that moment she could see he was not like Jerome, who would have been eager to discuss this question. It was the way most people were-they kept walls around their thoughts." "Naomi didn't hesitate. She knew that if she made her request a statement, many people didn't know they could decline. So over the years she had learned to not ask permission, but to presume commend." "Naomi knew that under the skirts was something that linked the nice old woman to her, and this felt profoundly comforting to her, because the old woman seemed strong. Like she would hit badness with her black iron skillet before she let it in the door." "People had a way of appearing and disappearing in one another's lives nowadays, she had found, so that no one asked 'Is it for work?' or...'My God, you look tired'...or 'Say, do you have family here?' America was an iceberg shattered into a billion fragments, and on each stood a person, rotating like an ice floe in a storm". "She whipped around, and faster than he could stop her she put her hand right into the trap. Her finger stopped just before touching the metal trigger. She held her hand there, looking straight up at him, giving an answer with her eyes. She was willing to sacrifice, to be the broken animal in the trap. Mr. B had a look of pleasure on his face. I will not run, that offering hand told him. I will not go." "Is this why you stay on here, to search for the missing?" He replied "No. I stay here because I love the work. I can remember Sarah here. I am afraid I will forget her if I leave." "It was funny how when it was time for tomorrow, some people stayed and some people left." "Detective Winfield was right. After so many years Walter Hallsetter was likely dead. But Naomi knew that some things never die. They just get passed on." "Naomi had long thought there is no safe place, even in our minds. Even there could be traps. We could round a corner and find a secret moldering like a toadstool in the dark. The dream was like a dark demon, bringing with it scraps of the past. It was hard to tell what was a skeleton to be buried-or a treasure to be revealed." "Naomi knew people would bankrupt themselves, morally as well as financially, to rescue their children, when what they needed to do was the opposite. They needed to rebuild, to re-create." "I've killed people with weapons. I know that, I own it. It is in my soul now. See. I made it mine." Naomi responds "Oh. It's like what I tell the children after I find them: to make it theirs. I want them to feel okay about themselves, to not feel ashamed." He responds: "Exactly. Once it is part of you, then no one can tell." Naomi says "That you were ever any different?" He responds: "That you should have been anything but what you are." "Maybe she would never know. All she knew was that evil was alchemy built on opportunity. Some went searching for it. Others just waited. Either way, it was bound to happen." "This is something I know: no matter how far you have run, no matter how long you have been lost, it is never too late to be found."

The Child Finder is a dark and haunting tale of missing children and a woman who hunts for them. Set in the snowy mountains of Oregon, the descriptions are beautiful and lyrical although the conditions are often brutal as people seek to survive the harsh conditions. Naomi is the Child Finder, a woman who herself was once lost as a child and then found and brought back to safety and love. Although she doesn't remember what happened to her, she dedicates her life to finding missing children, even though not all of them will be alive. Madison Culver disappeared when she was five during a family trip to the remote forest in the Skookum National Park to find a Christmas tree. She wandered off into the forest and was never found despite a widespread search. Three years Naomi has been asked by the Culvers to try to find out what happened to her. They know she may have perished three years ago but need to know for sure so they can move on with their lives. Naomi is very self sufficient and doesn't connect well with people, having only a few people in the world she loves and trusts. She is fearless of the outdoors and is well able to look after herself. Her instincts are very reliable when it comes to reading people and she is smart and persistant in teasing out clues to missing children. The story is very compelling and well paced and was hard to put down. Issues of child abduction and child abuse are dealt with sensitively and without great detail with the focus more on how children survive and protect themselves against these atrocities. There are hints of a sequel, possibly dealing with Naomi's own story as she starts to remember a bit more about her own past towards the end of the book, so that is something I'll be looking out for.

**Spoiler Alert** In the face of insupportable circumstances, people's brains can do some remarkable things. One category of miraculous safety mechanisms is the array of dissociative disorders, which would perhaps better be called dissociative deliverances. "The Child Finder" proposes the revolutionary idea that the parallel lives and selves that flower in the harsh soil of suffering are valuable and real and mighty, and that the most empowered path to healing includes embracing not only those phenomena but the suffering that made them possible and necessary. This is not a story of overcoming suffering: it is a story of owning and honoring it. This is the radical underpinning of a story which might be mistaken for a thriller. And you can read it as a thriller, if you like...or as a hymn to the dangerous beauty of Oregon, or as a love story, or as a crime procedural. And it is those things, as well. "The Child Finder" has several of the elements that made "The Enchanted" so compelling: a hurting, dauntless female protagonist whose impossible calling is nevertheless more possible than learning to be vulnerable to love; a man who sees her and wants to be what she needs; a character who makes prison into a sanctuary in order to survive; a character so innocent and yet so dangerously broken that the only fitting resolution is his death at the hands of a compassionate executioner. "The Child Finder" is at its most astonishing in its obvious narrative when it challenges the reader to extraordinary compassion and shows the world through the eyes of a person who has done something terribly wrong for reasons over which he has no agency. And it is even more astonishing in its less-obvious narrative, the spirit beneath its living body, the idea that we save ourselves not by turning away from our defining traumas in shame, not by denying who and what we've been, but by making it our own. This is what happened. It isn't your fault, but if life gives you the equivalent of a huge sack of knives to carry, and you're tasked to carry it forever, you can either cut and stab yourself until you bleed to death, or--to borrow an image from another story--you can construct the Iron Throne. It may be dangerous for other people to sit in it with you until you show them how, but--it's a beautiful thing. "The Child Finder" is full of edges honed so fine that they can split a hair. But there's a safe place for you to sit. Take up residence there for a few hours, and see who you are when you stand up again. See what you're carrying. What will you construct? What story will you tell?

Sometime during one of the big Amazon sales of ebooks during the Christmas season, I picked this one up after seeing the starred reviews. I was looking for a good thriller and wanted something for the new year. This was such a “fun” book that I couldn’t put it down and read it in almost a day. Naomi is a child finder. When the police have a case going cold and give up looking for a lost child, Naomi can be called by parents as a private investigator. She is blunt to the parents in her manner of speaking, but is excellent at what she does. Naomi never gives up. Madison is an 8 year old snow child. She lives and was born in the cellar of Mr. B. She has some memories of a past little girl named Madison, but she is a snow girl born 3 years ago. Mr B can be very cruel at times, but each and every day, her relationship with Mr B grows. She has made it her mission to touch his heart and help him realize he is a snow child too. Madison is the little girl Naomi is searching for and will not stop until she finds her. The problem is she is in a place in Oregon where there is perpetual snow, deep forests, and tons of tunnels. Finding Madison will be tricky, especially since Naomi still needs to deal with issues from her past. The entire book is told in a back and forth perspective between Madison and Naomi within the chapters. Time also jumps a little as we learn about Naomi’s past and her past traumas. There is also a side case Naomi is working on at the same time, so we jump there on occasion. There is no warning for the jumps and it takes a moment to get oriented, but it flows quite nicely. The technique that most stood out for me in this book is how little violence there is. This is a horrific story, as is the side story. There are some horrific things that happen, for example, Mr B rapes Madison, but it happens off page and there are no details of it as Madison doesn’t know what happened. It is completely left up to the reader to fill in the blanks. There are no gory descriptions of things, there is very little violence (Mr B hunts and there are descriptions of skinning the animal), yet there are some graphic and cringe worthy activities that happen, but everything is off the page or something else is described. Naomi finds a dead body at one point, but rather than talk about what she is seeing, she just describes that she knows there is a body because of the smell, so she describes the smell. It was very clever. If you are looking for a quick thriller to start your year off, check this one out. I really enjoyed the time with it. I gave it 4 stars.

This is the first book in the Naomi Cottle book series, written by the American Rene Denfeld who became widely known in the literary world with her novel, titled "The Enchanted". Denfeld uses a prose with elements of magical realism, almost poetic, especially in some parts of "The Child Finder". This special writing style however is not supported by an equally compelling plotline and the overall result is rather unsatisfying in the end. Naomi Cottle is a private investigator, specializing in finding abducted or missing children, thus she acquired the nickname, "The Child Finder". Naomi embarks on a new adventure when she returns to her hometown in Oregon and she is hired by the parents of a long-missing little girl, Madison, in order to uncover the truth about what happened to her three years ago when he disappeared during a family excursion in the woods. Naomi herself has a really dark past and she is unable to remember the first years of her life, when she was held captive by some unknown perpetrator(s). Now Naomi is tormented by nightmares where she sees herself running naked in some strawberry fields, away from some forgotten threat. The two mysteries, along with some other minor subplots, move forward in a slow tempo and the story is, in general terms, simple and straightforward lacking the whodunit element which often adds to the suspense of a crime novel. I don't mean that "The Child Finder" totally lacks any evidence of suspense, I was really drawn to the story, not because of its intricate plot, but rather for the great characterization of the protagonist and the dreamlike prose. There is a cliffhanger at the finale which will be dealt with in the second novel in the series, titled "The Butterfly Girl", with publication expected in autumn 2019. Rene Denfeld is definitely a skilled author and her books can be safely categorized in the -vague in general terms- literary crime fiction genre. If you are a fan of those novels, "The Child Finder" will certainly gratify you. So, fans of Sarah Waters, Rosamund Lupton, and Susan Hill should better check this one out.

This darkly beautiful story held me enthralled from beginning to end. It is difficult to imagine that a book with a storyline built around a captured, abused child and a child finder could be termed “beautiful”, but Rene Denfeld manages by her delicate use of language and creation of an almost magical atmosphere. It reads like a Noir fairytale with a Monster in the Forest, a Prince Charming and a Fairy Godmother. This does not in any way detract from the Horror of the subject matter, but it does make the reader more empathetic towards the characters, even the bad ones, and makes reading about the events less traumatic and more pleasurable. A child lost on a forested mountain slope, deep snow on the ground, with little chance of survival. Naomi, the Child Finder, is called in by the grieving parents as a last resort, three years after her disappearance. But Madison is a bright, imaginative child, who summons up the memory of fairy tales she has been told and retreats into a fantasy world. Madison is lost, but Naomi is “lost” too with only fragmentary memories of her own troubled past. Assisted by a Park Ranger, a childhood companion and a female friend Naomi sets out with unswerving determination to find Madison. As her search continues, Naomi experiences ever more vivid flashes from her own childhood in the form of Big Dreams. This author employs delicate descriptions to explore horrific situations. The reader receives a perfect visual picture without the use of sexually explicit phrases. Denfeld opens the reader’s eyes to the horror without hitting them over the head with a brutal rape speech hammer. She also handles the switch in narrative from Madison’s point of view to Naomi’s seamlessly, so the reader is never confused. A magical book on a disturbing subject. Highly recommended. Read it!

When all hope disappears for finding a lost child, there is Naomi. Parents find her through word of mouth; she is a legend in the field. She only takes one case at a time and spends whatever time is necessary until there is a result. She has found children missing for years; she has found bodies returned to grieving parents. She is unstoppable and has tunnel vision until she reaches resolution. What parents don't know is that Naomi was a lost child herself. Madison Culver has been missing for three years. Her parents turned their backs for one minute on a family Christmas tree expedition in the forest and she was gone. No one believes she is alive. The weather was horrible that day and winter was brutal. No body has been found. Naomi agrees to take the case. What Naomi can remember of her life begins the night she escaped. She came running out of the dark to a migrant campfire, naked, in shock and unable to remember what she was running from. She was around nine although her birthday was lost in the clouds that shroud her past. She knows only two things; that her name is Naomi and that her mother is dead. She is taken to a wonderful foster mother where another child lives also. He is around Naomi's age and becomes the only friend of her childhood; the only one she tells her secrets to. As Naomi searches for Madison, she meets the people of the remote area in Oregon where the child was missing. She is not welcomed and as she searches, she starts to uncover local secrets. There is a ranger who worries about her who also searches for those missing in his area and a policeman who serves as a resource for Naomi. She uses their help but gets close to no one. Rene Denfeld has created a compelling character in Naomi. Her own story lends authority to her searching as she is, in a way, always searching for herself, and for the child who she starts to remember running with her that night. Naomi has seen the worst in human nature and yet she perseveres to give the lost children a voice and a way home. This book is recommended for thriller readers.

From the moment I read the first page, I couldn’t put this book down. The fear was almost palpable and one can only imagine what a five year old girl would feel.

Naomi, is known as "The Child Finder". She is a private investigator who takes cases of missing children because she was once a lost child and she has the ability to place herself in the missing child's mind and therefore the final place where they were. Sometimes that means she finds a body and sometimes she finds the child alive. That is why the parents of Madison Culver look to her as their last hope of finding their child. To tell you more would take away the pleasure of reading the plot of this exciting book for yourself. But I can tell you that the Author, Rene Denfeld, is a licensed investigator herself, specializing in death penalty work. She can wind a tale that will put you on the edge of your seat until the last page. She did that to me and I recommend if you love suspense, you will love this book.

Um livro sem defeitos, mentira tem um sim, ele acaba :c recomendo demais, essa historia linda irá mexer com seu coração

have delayed reviewing this book, because I am so worried that my words will not do justice to this haunting and oh so perfect novel from the author of "The Enchanted". This is a novel that gets under your skin and steals a place in your heart and head, and one that I will come back to again and again. It is a novel of untold horrors (indeed, they are mostly untold, Naomi does not remember what happened to her and the snow child escapes into her imagination to cope with her incarceration) and cruelty, but also hope, resilience and forgiveness. The writing is lyrical and concise and have a strange fairy tale quality that really appeals to me. The depth and layers in this book are intricate and absorbing. Yes it is a story about a person who finds missing children, but it is also a story illuminating the power of the imagination, the horror of victim turned perpetrator, the growth of a human soul, the power of love and so much more. I would urge anyone to read this book, and my thanks go to the publishers and net galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

Couldn't put it down ... well written story, parts are hard to read (very sad circumstances) with a surprising ending.