The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir (review)

This two-handed memoir chronicles the experiences of the Busby family in 1979, when John, Cylin’s father and a police officer, was stalked and shot by a well-known local crime figure. Cylin and John take turns telling their stories, and though the accounts intersect at this crucial event, the experiences clearly diverge, with John telling a Serpico-like true-crime tale of corruption, law enforcement, and neardeath, and Cylin relating her experience as a nine-year-old whose world has come crashing down around her in ways she doesn’t completely understand. Oddly, John’s memoir is less effective, with shifts between past and present distracting, names piling up confusingly, and the focus on vengeance resolved with inexplicable suddenness. More compelling is Cylin’s account: the author successfully recaptures the priorities and limited perspective of her nine-year-old self, being frightened and embarrassed by the changes in her wounded father, and losing her grasp on a normal kid life not just because of her father’s injuries and the danger to her family but also because of her classmates’ and school’s reaction to the situation. The memoir could benefit from more shaping—for instance, there’s little development of one of the most poignant points, the troubled Busby kids’ desperate emulation of their parents’ “everything is fine” façade—but it’s still a drama that can suck readers in. Those who enjoyed Woodson’s Hush (BCCB 3/02) may wish to pursue this real-life counterpart.