How Quickly She Disappears

Elizabeth's sister disappears when she was a young girl. They were twins, and Elizabeth senses that Jacqueline is still alive.

She has an opportunity to find her when an airline pilot named Alfred Seidel enters her life. He's a substitute mail pilot serving the interior of Alaska, where Elizabeth and her husband John have moved for his job as a teacher. Elizabeth stays home to homeschool her daughter Marjorie who reminds her a lot of Jacqueline.

Then the story gets a bit hard to believe. Seidel says he has problems with his plane and asks if he can stay at Elizabeth's house. There is no hotel or motel in the small of Tanacross, a mostly Athabaskan town and she and John have an extra bedroom. There's nothing wrong with Seidel's plane, but when Mack, a friend of Elizabeth and John's, sniffs out the real reason he's there, Seidel murders him and is imprisoned.

He wants to see Elizabeth and hints that he knows where Jacqueline is. She's still alive. You won't believe what he has to say, but he keeps stringing her along until of all things, she agrees to let him talk to Marjorie, who's been acting up because her mother is spending too much time obsessing over Jacqueline, alone for twenty minutes. You know this can't be good. He's a murderer after all.

The book did have me on pins and needles toward the end when Elizabeth gets closer to finding out about Jacqueline, so close that she carries a gun.

If you can get past the coincidences (Alfred lived in Elizabeth's town in Pennsylvania, and she had no idea who he was despite the fact that he's been stalking her for years), you'll enjoy this book, but if you're constantly saying, “Wait a minute!” you won't. I ignored the little voice inside my head that was muttering those words.