Read for the 4-Mystery Addicts group and this is why I belong to many reading groups. I would likely never have picked up this book on my own and I would have missed a goodie!

Julianna Rosales and Wyatt Rivers have something in common, but they don’t know it, or each other. One was present on the night of August 1986 in Oklahoma City when a robbery at a local mall movie theater resulted in the deaths of six teens. Only Wyatt survived. The other was waiting for her sister who disappeared from the Oklahoma State Fair a month later. Now, in 2012, neither crime has been solved and the paths of Julianna and Wyatt are still obsessed with the events which left them with unresolved grief and survivor’s guilt.

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The Long and Faraway Gone
by Lou Berney
2015/ 467 pages
read by Brian Hutchinson – 12h 58m
rating: A++
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The problems of his boss and friend bring Wyatt to Oklahoma City to do some detective work on a case of harassment. Why is someone wanting the new owner of a run-down bar wanting her out?

Julianna is in Oklahoma City because she’s always been there, since before she was left at the OK State Fair by her sister who never returned. She vows to find out what happened.

The two threads alternate while building tension and some more fleshing out of the background in flashbacks.

I don’t always appreciate two or more narrators but I think this time it’s necessary or the reader might get mixed up between Julianna’s narrative and Wyatt’s. Neither is 1st person. There are a lot of crimes and characters involved.

The theme of survivor guilt was interesting – I don’t think I’d ever read that in a novel before.