Description:
Dream cars have no registration plate...
One evening, Adam’s mum pops out for the milk and doesn’t come back, launching a frantic nationwide search. Yet after weeks with no leads, the television crews drift away, the police start asking hairy questions, and Adam’s dad starts seeing someone else. Adam’s life is falling apart. But then he meets Skye, who it seems has misplaced a parent too, and things start to look up. That is, until a body is found...
What concept or situation about Misplaced makes it unique?
Death is final. It’s terribly sad, but the person is gone. But when someone goes missing, there’s always a chance they might come back. That perennial spark of hope is perhaps the thing that makes loss through disappearance the most difficult. In Misplaced, Adam’s grandpa has Alzheimer’s, an incurable disease in which a person loses their memory over time. I felt this was an important parallel to Adam’s story of loss as a person suffering from Alzheimer’s can have occasional periods of lucidity, providing family members with the cruel hope that the person might one day come back.
EXCERPT:
I lie in the
dark.
It’s quiet,
except for the faint churn of the dishwasher downstairs, but I can’t sleep.
When I was little, if I woke up from a bad dream, I’d hop into Mum’s side of
the bed and snuggle into her.
‘Just a bad
dream,’ she would murmur, half-asleep, wrapping an arm around me. ‘It’s not
real. Go back to sleep.’
But this
dream is real.
In the
darkness, I reach out my mind to Mum, closing my eyes and sending my thoughts
swirling into the universe like tendrils of smoke pouring into the farthest
corners, searching for her. If I concentrate hard, I feel I can almost reach
her. I can hear her breathe, smell the scent of her, feel the pulsing of her
heart, the warmth of her skin. Intuitively, I know that breathing will break
the connection, tenuous like a spider web weighed down after rain. I take a
deep breath and hold it... holding... holding... holding us together for as
long as I can so she knows I’m here and I’m thinking about her, missing her. My
head pounds from the strain. I screw my eyes up, feel the tension between my
eyebrows. Holding. My heart races. My cheeks scream. Chest bursting. Still, I
hold on. Eventually, I can’t help it: I have to breathe.
I lose her
in a whoosh.
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About the author:
Lee Murray is a full-time writer and editor with masters degrees in science and management. Lee wrote Misplaced after a friend, Florence, went missing from her home in France in 2003. Sadly, Florence is still missing. Lee lives in Tauranga, New Zealand with her husband and their two teenaged children.
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2 comments:
What is the prize?
Hi, Great to be featured on your site. Thanks heaps. Megan, the prize is a free ebook copy of the book.
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