Voices

by Janice Law

There are persistent whispers from the past, growing increasingly stronger. Ever since Leslie suffered a miscarriage several months ago, she's felt as though there's more to her childhood than she understands-or can remember. Why are there no photographs of her as a child? Why can't she remember anything before the age of five? On the job at a local paper, Leslie finds a small human-interest story on the wire service: Ruth Eden, three years old, kidnapped...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765302756
• ISBN13: 9780765302755
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding

I finished this book in just a few hours. I couldn't put it down. It is the story of Leslie who had just had a miscarriage and begins to remember things from her past yet is forgetting present day names and feelings. Leslie finds a story about a little girl that was kidnapped when she was 5 years old and the more she delves into the story the more similarities she finds in her own vague life.She visits the "Aunt" who raised her and gets some answers somewhat and ends up going to meet this family that she believes may be hers. She is now 30 years old with a life in Florida but travels to Conneticut to get answers and hopefully find out if this could be her family or if she just wants it so badly has imagined it so.This is a haunting story of lies and maistakes made by every day people and discovering what love and family really represents.Loved this book!

powerful character study

Recovering from a miscarriage, Florida reporter Leslie Austin starts recalling people and places that seem so real yet has no seeming link to her. Feeling haunted by the strange fleeting memories, Leslie becomes shook to her core when she reads a wire story on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the unsolved Connecticut abduction of three years old Ruth Eden.Leslie begins questioning why she remembers nothing before her fifth birthday and why she has no photos of her pre-school self or for that matter her parents whom her Aunt Flo and Uncle Mac insisted were dead. Leslie confronts her widowed aunt who reluctantly confesses that her mentally ill brother abducted a young child and gave the girl to them to raise. Believing she must be Ruth Eden, Leslie locates her biological father who explains that he believed her mother cheated on him so he sexually assaulted her. When Ruth was born, her mother went into a deep depression that turned worse when the child was kidnapped. Leslie wonders who is her dad?Though the mystery of who is Leslie is well written and will hook the audience, the theme of VOICES is much deeper as the audience receives a powerful character study focusing on Leslie whose life is based on an initial lie. The prime protagonist knows that she was raised in love by her "aunt" and "uncle", but upon learning how the hiding of her past sent her down a different path, she forsakes her trust in people. Janice Law is at her best in this tale in which the first domino is ignored with the push starting at the second tile.Harriet Klausner

A fine, meditative thriller

Another excellent work by Janice Law that will surely delight her legion of fans. Oddly enough, this was Law's first book, written before The Big Payoff (Houghton Mifflin; now available through iuniverse) was published in 1976. It sat in the author's drawer until Forge Press got fine reviews for what may still stand as the author's best work, The Lost Diaries of Iris Weed (Forge), and as is with such things, all of a sudden Law had a buyer. Continuing the author's fascination with memory and "quiet" cases -- such as the disappearance The Night Bus (Forge) was based upon -- this is a thriller that slowly builds to a tight crescendo. Don't look for bold thrills or techno-angst; this story, like many that take place in Law's novels, is one that delights in its subtlety and suckers the reader in until the awful truth is finally revealed.Small details will delight knowing Law fans: As some know, she went to college in Syracuse, NY in the 1960s and of course makes her current home in rural Connecticut (she is a professor at the University of Connecticut, though Googlers should be told that "Janice Law" is something of a wry nom de plume) where a number of her books have been set.