Neither one of these men realizes that IF it was the child's real father, there might be other children in the house and this man needs to be brought to justice. Neither one of these men recognize the child as a missing child, even though the abduction happened only about sixty miles away and the child had spent the previous summer in the town and is related to townsfolk. And the town's doctor goes along with it.

Because mansion owner himself was abused as a child and was returned to his abuser by social services, this justifies his keeping her. Why? Because this young, starving hysterical sexually abused child manages to tell her rescuers that 'Daddy' did this to her. Nevertheless the mansion's owner states his intention to keep the child. The mansion's owner calls his friend, the town doctor, who determines that this 5-6 year old has been raped. The child's parents are devastated.Īt some point after this abduction, time frame not stated but you have to believe it is months at the most, a naked, starving abused little girl shows up freezing in the rain after dark at the town's most creepy mansion.

Her older sister, who witnessed the abduction, has her life destroyed by this event. The child is horribly abducted on her way home from school. The child is not from the town, but has spent summers there and is well-known in the community family members run a resort there. Story is set in a small town where 'nothing ever happens.' (We are told this multiple times.) A child goes missing approximately twenty years before the beginning of the story. here is what you are expected to believe. SPOILERS (if you can call them that) FOLLOW I even went back to the book and to the other reviews to see if I missed something somehow, because no one else seems to have mentioned or been bothered by this, but to my mind this plot problem is so huge, gigantic, and overwhelming that I can't believe everyone else didn't put the book down, and run screaming from this author forevermore. I didn't hate this story as much as leave it shaking my head in complete confusion.

The Gingerbread Man by Maggie Shayne