When a black detective, Albert Blount, is assigned to the case, it raises the hackles of some of the locals, who harbor suspicions that he might not be trying his hardest to track down a white child. But Ruth Brough, Lang's mother, will have none of this talk. Fiercely hopeful, deeply committed to her veterinarian husband, her children, and the animals on the farm, Ruth is the real center of the novel. It is night and she is alone in the glittering cold listening to a disconnected set. The real story here is that of an educated farm woman walking the line between what she knows and what she can say, between duty and desire, between herself and the world.
Stiles holds the kind of knowledge that, when shared, makes the road a little less lonesome.