Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

"A magnificent debut filled with characters so vivid, strange, and richly imagined, you emerge feeling changed." —Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

In New York City, a girl called Lenora vanishes without a trace. Years earlier and miles upstate, Goldie, a wild, negligent mother, searches for a man to help raise her precocious son, Paul, who later discovers that the only way to save his soul is to run away. The Sweet Relief of Missing Children is a suspenseful novel about the power of running and the desire for reinvention. It explores the terror and transcendence of our most central experiences: childhood, parenthood, sex, love.