The Incident on the Bridge

by Laura McNeal

Multiple viewpoints provide an account of the disappearance and search for Thisbe... read more

Multiple viewpoints provide an account of the disappearance and search for Thisbe Locke, who goes missing on a night she visits her former boyfriend. Angry because he dumped her for someone else, Thisbe tells no one where she’s going. Shifting perspectives include Thisbe’s sister; a boy who likes Thisbe; a boy who saw Thisbe on the bridge the night she disappeared; and several different law enforcement authorities. Snippets of each individual’s personal story and qualities of their character emerge as integral to the plot while the back-and-forth narratives reveal that they all have pieces of the puzzle without knowing it. As they gradually understand the significance of what they saw or know, the emerging picture transforms one kind of fear into another. At first the assumption is that Thisbe jumped from the bridge in a suicide. Eventually it becomes clear she’s been kidnapped. Thisbe’s perspective, too, is part of the story, as is that of the mentally ill, increasingly unstable man who’s taken her, his poignant, unsettling backstory revealing that he believes Thisbe is his sister, who died when he was a child. This increasingly tense thriller features two distinct and disparate sisters who connect when it matters most at the center of a story that underscores the importance of what we see and what we say in piecing together truth. (Age 14 and older)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2017

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