Vanished
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

Morris opens her first novel with these words: ``This is the true story.'' It is an auspicious beginning to the novel and for Morris, who has written a story that not only rings true, but that is so achingly right it feels as if it might have come from one's own memory. It is the almost unbearably poignant saga of people whose lives, when finally unloosed from all that has been holding them down (but also miserably, unconsciously together), spin into utter chaos. It is summer in Vermont when it all begins. Dotty, an abused teenager, has murdered her father. She steals a truck from a road crew and then takes a jar of dimes from a nice house in Massachusetts. Middle-aged Aubrey Wallace comes with the truck; an 18-month-old girl they call Canny comes with the dimes. Five years later, still on the road, living out of boxes and the trunk of a car, Aubrey is still not too certain what happened (back in Vermont his wife hangs up when he calls), but he is completely tuned to Dotty, who determines the quality of their daily lives. This very fine novel has an unconscious pull that goes far beyond sentiment; its sympathies are not hemmed in by the strict boundaries that have ruined the lives of its characters. FW. [OCLC] 87-40435

In Morris's strong and painful first novel Aubrey Wallace, a simple, goodhearted laborer on a Vermont road crew, thinks the frail girl who beckons to him from a wooded stream looks like a picture book fairy. And like some malevolent enchantress, Dottycute, tarty, amoral and utterly freaked outenthralls Aubrey and lures him away from his family to his ultimate ruin. Sexually mistreated as a child, Dotty has committed atrocities that surface only later in the narrative. She has also kidnapped a baby girl named Canny. Now Dotty enlists Aubrey's help in making a wandering, criminal half-life for the three of them, as they bounce around the countryside for five years in a pickup truck. When they run into degenerate ex-con Jiggy Huller, living in backwoods squalor with his bovine wife Alma and their sad little girls, Dotty is nearly outmatched. A clumsy scheme is cobbled to collect ransom money from Canny's wealthy parents. But Aubrey loves poor-nit-infested, rheumy-eyed Canny, who clings to him screaming with terror, ``Don't dump me, Poppy.'' The story drives inexorably to its cynical and wrenching climax, fueled on booze, drugs and human misery. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

For five years, a shy, backward man travels the country with a wild young woman and a kidnapped child, living by stealing and by selling stolen goods. Helpless Aubrey Wallace does not have the courage or the know-how to escape the situation in which he is trapped with the sexually abused Dotty Johnson, who has brutally killed her father and stolen 18-month-old Canny. Aubrey, attached to Canny, shows her as much love and care as he can, letting Dotty call all the shots. The tragedy in this bizarre, intriguing first novel is a child's exposure, in her most formative and impressionable years, to a life of violence. But for Canny there is hope: she could be returned to her natural parents. For Aubrey and Dotty, there is no hope left. Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

For her first published words anywhere, Morris molds a memorable novel--part crime thriller, part picaresque--brimful of the hard-scrabble dreams and terrors of three unusual misfits, outsiders even in their native rural and poor Middle America. Dotty Johnson is the fulcrum of the three, a beautiful, mysterious teen-aged storm who blows into the life of dim-witted Vermont laborer Aubrey Wallace one hot summer day. Disheveled, alluring, Dotty appears on the mountainside where Aubrey is laying tar and within minutes talks him into forsaking wife and kids to take to the road with her. The next day, 200 miles away, Dotty leaves their truck only to come ""tearing around the corner and into the truck with a loaf of bread, a blue mason jar filled with dimes, and a little baby girl. . ."" Thus begins a tough, chaotic life of petty crime--softened by the presence of the stolen Canny--that Morris picks up again five years ""and maybe a million miles later,"" somewhere in the South. The current of love amongst the three now runs deep, but turbulent: Dotty sleeps around, pops pills, yearns for Hollywood glamour; Canny is dirt-smudged, lice-ridden, often scared: Aubrey, fearful of abandonment, has lost all pride in tagging along on Dotty's wild ride. That ride heads north, as Dotty decides that only dumping Canny back where they got her will free her to pursue silver-screen dreams: but in Vermont, the three link up with a second battered couple, saggy Alma and brutishly sly Jiggy Huller--and real trouble begins as sexual sparks between Dotty and Jiggy flame into a fevered scheme to ransom Canny back to her natural dad, a banker. Bumbling, at each others' throats, the outcasts fall into a police trap that tragically snaps shut on Aubrey--and, in this novel's only major false note, allows Dotty her jagged, shining dreams. The contrived ending and fitful pacing at times the narrative knots up into a barefoot Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolly--mar but don't spoil the pleasure of Morris' bull's-eye insight into her vibrant characters and their sad, simple ways: all in all, an auspicious and engrossing fiction debut. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

For five years, a shy, backward man travels the country with a wild young woman and a kidnapped child, living by stealing and by selling stolen goods. Helpless Aubrey Wallace does not have the courage or the know-how to escape the situation in which he is trapped with the sexually abused Dotty Johnson, who has brutally killed her father and stolen 18-month-old Canny. Aubrey, attached to Canny, shows her as much love and care as he can, letting Dotty call all the shots. The tragedy in this bizarre, intriguing first novel is a child's exposure, in her most formative and impressionable years, to a life of violence. But for Canny there is hope: she could be returned to her natural parents. For Aubrey and Dotty, there is no hope left. Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J. Copyright 1988 Cahners Business Information.

In Morris's strong and painful first novel Aubrey Wallace, a simple, goodhearted laborer on a Vermont road crew, thinks the frail girl who beckons to him from a wooded stream looks like a picture book fairy. And like some malevolent enchantress, Dottycute, tarty, amoral and utterly freaked outenthralls Aubrey and lures him away from his family to his ultimate ruin. Sexually mistreated as a child, Dotty has committed atrocities that surface only later in the narrative. She has also kidnapped a baby girl named Canny. Now Dotty enlists Aubrey's help in making a wandering, criminal half-life for the three of them, as they bounce around the countryside for five years in a pickup truck. When they run into degenerate ex-con Jiggy Huller, living in backwoods squalor with his bovine wife Alma and their sad little girls, Dotty is nearly outmatched. A clumsy scheme is cobbled to collect ransom money from Canny's wealthy parents. But Aubrey loves poor-nit-infested, rheumy-eyed Canny, who clings to him screaming with terror, ``Don't dump me, Poppy.'' The story drives inexorably to its cynical and wrenching climax, fueled on booze, drugs and human misery. (June) Copyright 1988 Cahners Business Information.