Imagine your five-year old at a birthday
sleepover. Imagine all the girls disappear.
As five-year old girls disappear from
birthday parties year after year across the U.S., the sister of victim number
one is thrown into the kidnappers’ path when she moves to the remote Upper
Peninsula of Michigan ten years after her sister is kidnapped. There, she finds
it’s not only candles that light up the trusting, rural community.
When ten-year-old Brandy Barrett
and her mother, Rachel, hurry to the large colonial where Brandy’s
five-year-old sister, Victoria, spent the night, Brandy prays Torey is ready.
The girls have been promised a movie by their mother if there’s time after
shopping.
Brandy stares. The house looks
empty. No birthday balloons, no cake. And no little sister waiting with stories
about the birthday sleepover.
Was it her fault because she rushed
her mother to leave the night before?
She and her father, Joe, both
harbor guilt that they hadn’t been there to foresee what could happen with a
five-year old staying alone all night.
Brandy’s mother can’t deal with her
role in allowing Victoria to go to the sleepover, and she eventually commits
suicide, adding even more guilt to Joe and Brandy.
Ten years later, after Brandy graduates
from Oakland University, she takes a teaching position in the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan. After meeting the single, female superintendent, she convinces her
father to retire from the military and follow along. She has plans to play
matchmaker.
Three other families move to Iron
Cove. Neither Joe nor Brandy can imagine what awaits them when one of those
families has plans to kidnap once again.
Dropping my own daughter off at a birthday sleepover almost 25 years ago started this trip, this book, this journey. I worried all of the what ifs, and made them happen on paper. While my own daughter was fine the next morning, Torey, in the story, was not!
“The premise of this book is chilling,
while the writing will keep you turning pages.”
Richard L. Mabry, MD
Award-winning, best-selling author of
Medical Mysteries with Heart
Blow out the Candles
and Say Goodbye by Linda Glaz is more than a heart-rending, page-turning
read (though it is certainly that). It is also a call to accountability and
action for parents, grandparents, teachers, and anyone who cares for children.
This heartbreaking, fictional account of the kidnapping of innocents is, sadly,
based on fact. There truly are children out there whose lives have been stolen
from them, and families whose loved ones have been spirited away, many never to
be seen or heard from again. It is impossible to read this well-written story
without being challenged to pray for these precious children and their
devastated families, and to do whatever possible to help these little ones get
back home—before it is too late. I can’t recommend this excellent read highly
enough!
Kathi Macias (www.kathimacias.com),
author of more than 50 books, including To
the Moon and Back.
Once again Glaz pens a chilling story, every parents'
nightmare. She delves into the minds of villains with sickening precision. This
book will make you keep the lights on!
Jessica Nelson, editor and multi-published author of A Hasty Betrothal…
