The Deep End Of The Ocean, by Jacquelyn Mitchard

The Deep End Of The Ocean is a novel about a child vanishing from his family. It’s an emotional thriller, and what the family goes through when the little boy disappears is completely gripping to read. The mother’s name is Beth. She is busy like most working moms, rushing between her home and family and her other work.

Beth goes to Chicago to a school reunion leaves her older son, Vincent, in charge of his very young brother, Ben. When she comes back to get the kids, Ben seems to have wandered off. They call him and look for him, but they can’t find any trace of him. Jacquelyn Mitchard writes of the growing panic of the mom when she can’t find the boy, and then the disbelief and shock when the police have to be called in and the family has to face the fact that something serious has happened to the little boy.

Several years pass, and they all continue to try to cope with what has happened. The older son, Vincent, always feels it’s his fault. Then, nine years later, after they have moved to Chicago, Beth believes she has found her son again. Now aged 12, the boy is called Sam and he lives nearby. Beth and her family slowly learn the truth about Ben’s life in the past few years and the mentally ill woman who took him in the first place. Finding the son, however, does not make everything okay for Beth and her family. Ben has been adopted, and the man who has raised him loves him and doesn’t want to give him back to Beth. Ben himself feels as if he belongs with the father who has brought him up since he was very small. Now he feels caught between two families. The book doesn’t resolve everything, but when the two brothers, Ben and Vincent, begin to form a relationship again, it is obvious things will move toward a happy conclusion.
I enjoyed Mitchard’s writing in that the way she conveys a parent’s loss as well as the pain of losing a child is very realistic and evokes sympathy for Beth.