Missing

Winter Crane has spent her life in poverty in the small Appalachian town of Reeve’s End and has watched young people graduate from high school and escape from the town and she is eager to escape as well. When she discovers a young man unconscious in the woods, mysterious events start to unfold, and they raise the question of whether the town’s young people have actually escaped to freedom or if there is something more sinister happening. This suspenseful Canadian novel for grades 9-12 can be used as an independent or literature circle novel, to explore character development and how to build suspense in writing, and to launch discussion of nature vs. nurture.