Liese O'Halloran Schwarz's What Can Be Saved is a family saga, a mystery and a lush depiction of expat Americans in 1970s Asia that moves seamlessly among decades and between continents.
In 2019, a stranger in Thailand e-mails Laura Preston in Washington, D.C., with a shocking claim: that she knows Philip, Laura's brother, who disappeared in that country more than 40 years earlier. Laura flies to Bangkok, defying her sister Bea's caution that it's a hoax. With this, readers sense the mystery that haunts the Preston family--what happened to Philip?--and the stress and sorrow the tragedy creates.
Robert Preston's job is vague: he's designing but never completes a dam--a clue that eventually leads to revelations. He's posted from D.C. to Thailand in 1972, where his three children, Laura, Bea and Philip, enjoy the perks of wealth and their mother, Genevieve, is a charming lady of leisure. A parallel story, of their Thai servants' lives, is critical to the pivotal event, eight-year-old Philip's apparent abduction from a judo class. Opening in 2019 with Philip's purported reappearance and Laura's return to Bangkok leads to a natural progression back to the memories of their childhoods, and Schwarz alternates sections from the past and the present, providing clues that unravel the individual Prestons' stories. The story of Philip's disappearance and his alleged reappearance in 2019 offers a fascinating view of Southeast Asia in those decades. Schwarz (The Possible World) keeps the surprises coming and celebrates the notion that in every family and situation, there's always something to be saved. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.