“If you can dance through this, Esme, you can dance through anything.”
In The Lily in the Light by Brooklyn author Kristin Fields, the “this” to which the teacher of 11-year-old aspiring ballerina Esme Johnson refers is the disappearance of her 4-year-old sister, Lily. Don’t expect, however, a whodunit-cum-Law & Order episode where Queens, where the Johnsons reside, goes out en masse in search of the preschooler, while we follow the leads uncovered by the dogged detectives.
What makes this debut novel so engrossing is that it focuses on those left behind to deal with the trauma of such a tragedy.
On the day in question, everyone becomes a suspect – even Esme’s 17-year-old brother Nick. But Esme knows in her heart that it is the neighborhood Boo Radley, nicknamed Birdman, who somehow has a hand in this.
With nothing else for them to do but wait for the police to find the kidnappers, the Johnsons have to move forward. Or in Esme’s case, dance as fast as she can.
At first blush, one might get the impression that for the next eight years everyone -parents Cerise and Andre, Nick, as well as 15-year-old sister, Madeline – follows Esme’s lead with a cavalier life-goes-on attitude. But what the family is really doing when Nick joins the NYPD, Madeline chooses motherhood, and Esme runs the farthest to attend an elite San Francisco ballet school, is building protective walls around themselves. They can’t let in anymore hurt.
Eventually, the story of Lily’s disappearance transforms into “a fairytale, like Little Red Riding Hood or The Gingerbread Man,” and the little gone girl becomes a mythical creature, at least to her next eldest sister.
Esme, who has made her way to Paris, has unapologetically created a life for herself. She not only has a boyfriend, but an imaginary best friend named (you guessed it) Lily, with whom she laughs, converses, and argues as sisters are known to do.
She has never believed the worst of her sister’s fate, clinging to the idea that Lily has always been safe, living with another family. While on the cusp of her big career break in the City of Lights, she gets a call that might make her near-decade long fantasy a reality.
Will this be another false alarm, as there have been in the past? Once again, DNA is tested. What will be more frightening for the divided Johnson family: finding out it’s not Lily or discovering it is? And if so, their world will once again be turned upside down and something called reunification therapy would be required.
Esme hopes for the best, of course, but still worries, not sure where or how the sisters might fit into each other’s lives after all this time.
A real concern, indeed.
When I was 13, my parents got back together after a roughly ten-year separation. One might think that the reconsolidation of a family has all the earmarks of a Hallmark commercial where everyone gathers for a group hug, before picking up where they left off. The fact is, all parties involved have found a new normal in order to cope and have to get to know each other all over again, which has its high and low moments, as well as frustrations.
Many circumstances cause people to come and go through our lives—especially in our time when “ghosting” appears to be the de rigueur way of ending friendships as well as romantic and even professional relationships.
Esme is inspiring because, during her sister’s absence, she chooses to not just exist. This is evident in Esme’s most profound line in The Lily in the Light, which is actually wisdom for the day-to-day as well: “I missed you so much, but I lived my life anyway.”
Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novels Fat Chick and Back to Work She Goes.
