Just Jennifer

The Day I Died by Lori-Rader-Day

The latest book by Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark Awards winning author explores families, those we are born into and those we create, and how we cope and escape when things become unbearable and how we return when there are no other options left us.  Anna Winger lives with her thirteen-year-old son Joshua in Park, a small Indiana town where they live a relatively quiet life and where Anna is hiding out from something unspoken in her past.  Anna is a handwriting analyst and takes jobs mostly on referral from her contact in law enforcement, Kent; she analyzes job applications and ransom notes, and even love letters, advising what type of person might have written them.  When a two-year-old boy Aidan is kidnapped, his mother missing and his babysitter dead, Anna is called in to read a note left by whoever took the young boy, but she is met with a bit of resistance and skepticism by the local police force and feels there is something that is being kept from her, either intentionally or unintentionally, and begins to investigate on her own.  When Joshua goes missing, Anna must face the things from which she has been running and confront her own past in order to find her son and bring him back safely to her.  This story not only has a well-constructed plot with sympathetic characters, it also packs an emotional punch as Anna’s story is slowly revealed and as a community searches for two lost boys hoping that it is not too late to save them…and their mothers who might not even realize they need saving.