Life changes in an instant. On a foggy beach. In the seconds when Abby Mason—photographer, fiancée soon-to-be-stepmother—looks into her camera and commits her greatest error. Heartbreaking, uplifting, and beautifully told, here is the riveting tale of a family torn apart, of the search for the truth behind a child’s disappearance, and of one woman’s unwavering faith in the redemptive power of love—all made startlingly fresh through Michelle Richmond’s incandescent sensitivity and extraordinary insight.

Six-year-old Emma vanished into the thick San Francisco fog. Or into the heaving Pacific. Or somewhere just beyond: to a parking lot, a stranger’s van, or a road with traffic flashing by. Devastated by guilt, haunted by her fears about becoming a stepmother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. And so she searches for clues about what happened that morning—and cannot stop the flood of memories reaching from her own childhood to illuminate that irreversible moment on the beach.

Now, as the days drag into weeks, as the police lose interest and fliers fade on telephone poles, Emma’s father finds solace in religion and scientific probability—but Abby can only wander the beaches and city streets, attempting to recover the past and the little girl she lost. With her life at a crossroads, she will leave San Francisco for a country thousands of miles away. And there, by the side of another sea, on a journey that has led her to another man and into a strange subculture of wanderers and surfers, Abby will make the most astounding discovery of all—as the truth of Emma’s disappearance unravels with stunning force.

A profoundly original novel of family, loss, and hope—of the choices we make and the choices made for us—The Year of Fog beguiles with the mysteries of time and memory even as it lays bare the deep and wondrous workings of the human heart. The result is a mesmerizing tour de force that will touch anyone who knows what it means to love a child.

"Abby Mason, a freelance photographer based in San Francisco, walks along the rather strange stretch of Ocean Beach, an isolated margin by the Pacific, with her stepdaughter-to-be, Emma, who's 6 years old and a handful. Jake, Abby's husband-to-be, is off seeing an old friend this weekend, and Abby knows that her babysitting chore is part of a fairly elaborate audition about getting married. Jake has..." Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) been left by Lisbeth, his first wife, a heroin addict, and is looking for a suitable mother for Emma, among other things.

But Abby screws up. She's a photographer, after all, and her attention is distracted by a dead seal. She snaps a picture, and another, and when she looks up, little Emma is gone, disappeared into ubiquitous, treacherous San Francisco fog. Then Abby must call her fiance, who, when he hears about this catastrophe, utters the memorable line, 'How could you? ... God, Abby, how could you?'

Of course, from Page 14, the reader identifies Jake as a spineless, second-rate sidewinder. But Abby knows she's in love with him, and in true female tradition, takes on all the responsibility for what's happened. How could she have done it? How could she have, even for a moment, looked away?

Thereafter follows a narrative of desperate-parent porn. We are forced to consider what has happened to the thousands of missing children all over the country — the raped and murdered ones, those who have been kidnapped by ex-spouses, those who have been kidnapped by perverts or people who are madly lonely; all those little kids we see on milk cartons.

At first 'The Year of Fog' reads like a dreadful how-to book: 'What to Expect When Your Child Is Kidnapped.' Both Abby and Jake are asked to endure lie-detector tests. The police mention (casually? menacingly?) that in disappearances such as this the primary suspects usually come from the immediate family. Was Emma going to be an impediment to Abby and Jake's upcoming marriage? And what about Lisbeth, Emma's mother? When the case hits the newspapers and television, why doesn't Lisbeth immediately come forward? Again, the cops seem uninterested, muttering something about how hard it is to find somebody when she doesn't want to be found.

They think Emma has drowned. This particular stretch of beach has always been notorious for its monstrous, unexpected rogue waves. But Jake and Abby, devastated by grief, put out fliers anyway, set up a command post, recruit volunteers, give interviews to anyone who will listen. Because, as the whole world knows, the longer a missing child is gone, the larger the chance that he or she will never turn up again. Jake goes on a national television talk show. Abby, as befits her secondary position, appears on a local one, where, unexpectedly, that addict first wife finally turns up, well groomed and a little plump, to tell her side of the story, which is far from complimentary about Abby.

'The Year of Fog' is ambitious, or that at least seems to be the author's intention. Beyond the story of love-gone-wrong and the mystery of the missing child, it aims to offer a meditation on memory. If Abby could just remember the moments before Emma disappeared, she might be able to solve the mystery of what happened. She does remember a couple of parked cars and some people in them, but she can't recall any specifics. A helpful elderly neighbor pulls out dozens of books on memory from the library, and the reader may learn more than he or she would ever want to know about this process.

The novel is also repetitive. Chapter after chapter ends with some sentimental recollection about how much Abby loved Jake and little Emma, and how that familial harmony will never be the same again. Whole chapters about their domestic habits could have been cut here, with no harm done to the story. But the novel is also about obsession, and obsessives repeat themselves.

As the weeks wear on, Jake withdraws. Is he grief-stricken or just a jerk? It's hard to know. And we begin to learn a little more about Abby — why she yearns so for domestic bliss. Her own parents were wretchedly unhappy together. When she was a child, one day at the beach she saw another child drown. When she was a rebellious teenager, she took up with Ramon, a photographer in his 20s, who seduced her and took photographs of her in the nude. When Ramon died under mysterious circumstances, his sister sent those nude photographs to Abby's mother, who threw a predictable conniption fit, took Abby out of school and made her go to a support group for sex addicts. But who, in the couple that was Ramon and Abby, really seduced whom? Who was the more helplessly in love? Whom the real victim?

Which leads, indirectly, to another question scarcely ever asked: What might the secret life of a kidnapper and his prey really be like? Those who know don't tell, and those who tell don't know. We do know, in this story, that the father is far more interested in getting on with his own life than Abby is. And we see Abby get herself into a classically awful situation: If she gives up on finding Emma, she'll be an irresponsible sociopath who should never have been left with a child in the first place. If she succeeds in finding Emma after Jake has given up on the search, she'll make Jake look really, really bad, and he'll never be able to forgive her for that.

The answer to the mystery, such as it is, is very skillfully rendered here. It remains hidden, but it's always right under the reader's nose. This novel is cast as conventional 'women's lit,' at its most love-struck and noble, but smarter than it seems at first and very subversive. Why is it that women (are said to) try so hard to get married? What is that cozy life supposed to add up to, anyway? What if the good boys we're supposed to marry can turn out to be fairly bad, and the bad boys fairly good? What if the kids we love so blindly have their own agendas? Despite its flaws, 'The Year of Fog' asks and answers some of these puzzling questions.

" Reviewed by Peniel E. Joseph, an assistant professor of Africana studies at SUNY Stony Brook and the author of 'Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America'Timothy Noah, a senior writer at SlateJames P. Othmer, who is a former advertising executive and the author of the novel 'The Futurist'Patrick Anderson, whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers(at symbol)aol.comCarolyn See, who may be reached at www.carolynsee.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"A mesmerizing novel of loss and grief, hope and redemption, and the endurance of love." Library Journal, starred review

"Richmond gracefully explores the nature of memory and perception in key passages that never slow the suspense of the search…a page-turner with a philosophical bent." Booklist

Grade: A. "Gripping…Richmond makes the reader feel the gamut of emotions, from the initial disbelief and blind hope to the nagging guilt and gnawing despair." Alexis Burling,The Washington Post

"Richmond's second novel is a startlingly original take on every parent's worst nightmare…An unsettling and powerful punch of a book, The Year of Fog unfolds as a waking dream about the persistence of memory and the extraordinary force of love." Cookie Magazine

"A good part of what makes "The Year of Fog" compulsively readable is the voice of its narrator. Abby's tone is quietly conversational, almost as though she is sitting across the table and, over a cup of coffee, calmly telling her tale. The dispassionate tone reveals a brutally honest teller, and only serves to heighten the tension of the story…both believable and bittersweet." Robin Vidimos, The Denver Post

"Much more than a tale of a woman looking for a child who's lost. It's also about the nature of passion, guilt, and most of all, memory…The Year of Fog also serves as a real-life guidebook of sorts to some of San Francisco's lesser known neighborhoods and sites…Richmond captures the spirit of life in The City." Leslie Katz, The San Francisco Examiner

"In The Year of Fog, Richmond gives us both a mystery and a meditation on memory. Profound, deeply moving, endlessly gripping; you will devour it in a weekend and turn it over to begin again." Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli

"From the very first chapter The Year of Fog grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go. Michelle Richmond is that marvelous thing, a writer who can craft a gorgeous sentence and also create a plot so propulsive that it hurts to put the book down, even for a minute. And forget about sleeping. You won't do that until you're finished." Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

"Michelle Richmond's The Year of Fog is a harrowing and unputdownable novel. A moving account of one woman's ardous journey from an ordinary day to nightmare to, ultimately, redemption. Few novelists put their characters through harder paces than Richmond. And readers have no choice but to carried away by the enduring beauty of this story." Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo & Esther Stories

Heartbreaking, uplifting, and beautifully told, this work is a riveting tale of how life can change in an instant and of one woman's faith in the redemptive power of love.

Michelle Richmond is the author of The Year of Fog, Dream of the Blue Room and The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. Her stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Playboy, The Oxford American, and elsewhere. She has been a James Michener Fellow, and her fiction has received the Associated Writing Programs Award and the Mississippi Review Prize. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Michelle lives with her husband and son in San Francisco, where she is at work on her next novel.