Author Lou Berney wrote one of my favorite reads so far in 2019 — November Road. Because I liked that book so much, I decided to give one of his earlier books a try. I liked The Long and Faraway Gone just as much. Thumbs up to Lou Berney!

Back in Oklahoma City 1986, two very sad fictional events transpired. Five employees working in a movie theater are shot and killed execution-style. Inexplicably one of the teenaged employees isn’t shot. He has no idea why he was spared, but as you can imagine, the notion that he didn’t die while everyone else did haunts him. In the meantime, a young woman, who is visiting the state fair with her younger sister, goes missing and a body is never found.

Years later, both the surviving theater worker and the surviving younger sister set out to find closure by solving the cases themselves. The author has the two meet at a point in the book — a clever move — but other than that, the two stories are not connected.

Berney’s writing makes for an interesting story. Like November Road, I was unable to put the book down until I could learn the outcomes of their individual stories.

I highly recommend this book.

Here is a link to the book.