The Missing Child
A novel
Lester & Orpen Dennys (an imprint of Key Porter Books), reprint 1998
Lester & Orpen Dennys 1989
“Isolated deep in a glacial valley, the town of Agassiz churns with conflicting undercurrents. Yet only eccentric, lovable Minnie Pullman, possessed of an extraordinary gift of memory, is aware that an ancient underground glacier is melting and the valley is about to be wiped out. As the river rises, as children go missing and death strikes unexpectedly, the novel builds to its tumultuous climax, and the townspeople come vividly to life. Sandra Birdsell has people the world of Agassiz with characters both larger than life yet ultimately familiar. In the details, follies, struggles and joys of their lives we see a reflection of ourselves. The Missing Child is deeply humane in its vision.”
Medals& Ribbons
- Winner of the W.H.Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award
- “Birdsell clearly loves her characters. She has their intricate movements mapped out in her head at all times…. The Missing Child is a brilliant, sustained, and perfectly constructed novel and clearly a winner.” — citation for First Novel Award
Praise for The Missing Child
- “… hauntingly universal …” — Michael Ondaatje
- “In The Missing Child Birdsell Brilliantly transforms (a town) into a world where the miraculous is ordinary and the ordinary miraculous.” — Jane Urquhart
- “The grotesque, the cruel, and the absurd are seen for what they are … brilliantly imagined and beautifully written …” — Books in Canada
- “… lush and lyrical, the characters deftly drawn, the setting alive with the pulse of nature.” — Toronto Star
- “Sandra Birdsell’s first novel dazzles the reader with the palpable creation of the fictional town of Agassiz and a shimmering kaleidoscope of truth and lies, characters and events, times and places, stories and stories-within-stories, day-and-night images and dreams, obsessions and passions, and desires and fears. The Missing Child is enchanting, entrancing … Birdsell exudes a confident, authoritative sense of poetic style.” — Prairie Fire
- “… a winning mixture of reality and vision.” — Now Magazine
- “Sandra Birdsell has brought enormous energy to The Missing Child. The characters she has chosen for this neighborhood … make up a carefully organized microcosm. The movement of the individual characters- chaotic, realistic and fantastic all at once- is set against fully realized forces determined by the unknown, by history, by fate and by human potential and limitation…. The intellectual energy in The Missing Child would not survive unless accompanied by crafty writing, and this novel is full of it. There are some fine, sweet descriptions of the smallest of things. Much is seen with a fresh eye. Birdsell is apparently unaware that there is nothing new under the sun.” — Bonnie Burnard, Globe and Mail
- “… a powerful first novel.” — Ottawa Citizen
- “… provocative, political and funny …” — Hamilton Spectator
- “None of Sandra Birdsell’s past fiction quite prepares you for her first novel. The Missing Child is a big book that pries the lid off ordinary reality, moving freely between the language of the conscious mind and the images of the unconscious…. (The novel’s) extraordinary vitality comes from the vividness of the author’s language, the unerring accuracy of her characterizations and images that seem to come from the outside reaches of the imagination…. What (Birdsell) has produced … is a disturbing, intelligent, exuberant novel, one that you will feel in your backbone as you read. The Missing Child is a wonderful book.” — Winnipeg Free Press
- “… Birdsell can be wise, witty, severely profound.” — Maclean’s
- “… a fast-paced and tightly structured … Birdsell’s characters are extremely well-drawn and their lives are rich and full, although also extremely normal and believable. Birdsell is an expert at making the seemingly ordinary appear miraculous and poetic.” — The Journal
