Isabel Booth is the pen name of Karen Jewell, a former trial attorney and now a writer. She holds an undergraduate degree in English, a Master’s in Business Administration, and a Juris Doctorate degree. When she’s not writing she loves to read, travel, and cook dinner for friends. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband.
Booth's new novel is Then He Was Gone.
At CrimeReads the author tagged four thrillers "examine the effects on the sibling left behind." One title on the list:
Tim Johnston, DescentRead about the other novels on the list at CrimeReads.
The Courtland family is on vacation in Colorado when eighteen-year-old Caitlin, starting college in a few weeks on a track scholarship, is abducted. Her youngerbrother Sean is left lying by the side of the road, his leg shattered by the stranger in yellow-tinted glasses who took her.
Months go by, then years, and Sean undergoes transformation from a shy, overweight teenage boy his sister called Dudley, to a muscular, cigarette-smoking young man. He wanders aimlessly around the country in a truck he stole from his father, taking odd jobs to earn gas money to keep going. Ready to fight anyone abusing or disrespecting young women, he is haunted by shame that he didn’t do more to stop Caitlin from climbing into the kidnapper’s vehicle to go get help for her brother.
Beat up, released after a night in jail, Sean asks his father, “Do you think we’ll ever feel normal again?” When his father asks what’s normal, Sean replies, “I don’t know….Not this.” The novel is a powerful story of guilt, loneliness, and a family falling apart.
--Marshal Zeringue
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