In a prologue set in Wisconsin, 51-year-old Robert Charles Landsness is at his mother’s deathbed, urging her to “tell me the God-damn truth.” He has “never quite been comfortable” in his military family, and he has visions of happier, distant past in a “beautiful suburban home.” His mother muses to herself about the “the night Robert had come to her” in 1955 Panama City, but she dies before answering his plea. The novel then jumps back to 1955 to unfurl a tale of young Long Island mom Colleen Goodson, who briefly leaves her 3-year-old son Bobby, along with his baby sister, outside an IGA supermarket, then returns to find them gone. The daughter is quickly found, but Bobby remains missing, resulting in “the largest search in the young history of Nassau County” in New York state. Local police pursue various false leads, at one point questioning a Black family whose car was seen in the area around the time of the disappearance. An ambitious young reporter scores an interview with Colleen, who, like her Air Force-base employee husband, appears strained and oddly detached. The Goodsons receive several ransom notes, but these prove to be the work of at least one opportunistic prankster. As years go by, the Goodsons divorce and move back to their native Kansas. When Landsness later claims to be Bobby Goodson, a new team of detectives reopens the case. By novel’s end, the mystery is solved after heading a surprising new direction.
Nine-time Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Valenti, whose verse is included in the anthology 13 Poets from Long Island (2023), provides In Cold Blood-like depth to this fictionalized account of what this book’s subtitle notes is “One of the Oldest Unsolved Missing Child Cases in U.S. History.” In real life, 2-year-old Steven Damman disappeared while left unattended in front of a Long Island bakery in 1955, and he was never found. Valenti’s depiction of Colleen is particularly nuanced and multifaceted, noting her flaws and limitations while also the addressing emotional consequences of her abusive childhood; it also effectively explores how she was suspected of killing her own child. Valenti also dramatizes the scope and painstaking work of the police investigation, which grimly included scrutiny of area parents who recently lost children and may have been looking for a replacement. However, Valenti’s conclusion to the story is unbelievably convoluted, necessitating a rather complicated backstory. Many other elements of the story, however, are close to those of the actual case, which had many strange turns, including someone claiming 50 years later that he may have been the kidnapped child. An afterword separating fact from fiction would have been welcome, though, and readers will want to know how much Valenti reported on this fascinating case. Still, the book strikingly captures the angst of its well-sketched character, resulting in an often compelling read.
