Hired to find a young girl who went missing three years earlier, private investigator Madison Culver embarks on a search in a remote Oregon forest, where she is forced to confront painful realities from her own past as a lost child. - (Baker & Taylor)

“It’s ‘Deliverance’ encased in ice… Denfeld’s novel is indeed loaded with suspense, its resonance comes from its surprising tilt towards storytelling restraint, a rarity in this typical crackling genre. Elegiac, informative and disquieting. . . . The novel gallops to a suitably heart-racing finish.” — New York Times Book Review

A haunting, richly atmospheric, and deeply suspenseful novel from the acclaimed author of The Enchanted about an investigator who must use her unique insights to find a missing little girl.

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon’s Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now—if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder," Naomi is their last hope.

Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.

As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?

Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive.

Booklist Reviews

Denfeld, whose first novel, The Enchanted (2014), explored the mythic properties and imaginative possibilities of prison, again finds inspiration in dark places. Naomi has earned a reputation as an investigator with a gift for finding missing children, or determining for certain that they will not be found. This time Naomi, once a lost child herself, seeks Madison Culver, who disappeared three years ago, at age five, during a family outing to chop down a Christmas tree in Oregon's beautiful, snow-laden, and inhospitable Skookum forest. Into Naomi's search for Madison, her tentative prodding at her own past, and involvement in a missing-baby case, Denfeld splices in the narration of a young "snow girl," who is imaginatively surviving her violent imprisonment with the unspeaking Mr. B, whom she believes is her husband, by adopting an identity from her favorite Russian fairy tale. Aptly unclassifiable, Denfeld's compulsively readable second novel calls on elements of horror, suspense, and fairy tales to explore legacies of abuse and the resilience of the most vulnerable among us. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Investigator Naomi is especially good at locating lost children because once upon a time she was lost herself. Now she's after Madison Culver, who vanished three years ago in Oregon's Skookum National Forest. Her search brings up bits and pieces of memory that promise to deliver something dark if they ever coalesce. Big in-house love; Denfeld's The Enchanted was an ALA Notable Book of the Year.