They just Vanished ... Disappeared. Gone. Lost. No answers. Still missing.
Imagine the pain, confusion and emotional roller-coaster that families experience when a loved one goes missing. What would you do? How would your family cope?
This is a heart-wrenching collection of true stories told through the eyes of family members who have experienced the trauma of a missing loved one. It follows their journeys from the desperate searches in the first days, through the Police investigations and, in many cases, the heartbreak as the years rolls by without any news.
From two young girls who might have been early victims of Ivan Milat ... a woman who was last seen walking alongside a Victorian highway ... a man who vanished among the homeless in Sydney ... a teenage boy likely murdered and fed to crocodiles in Kakadu ... two Tasmanian men who disappeared under strange circumstances ... a heroin addict who just couldn't face another day ... the man who disappeared from a hospital in Adelaide after collapsing in the street ... the circumstances are all different, but the impact on the families devastating
Nicole Morris is the founder of the Australian Missing Persons Register.
She has written this book to develop awareness of the plight of the courageous families of missing persons and raise public awareness to help find those people who seem to have vanished into thin air.
An eye opener
I picked up Vanished after seeing the authors story in the QMagazine - it made me want to know more about the stories of the missing but also more about Nicole. She writes so sympathetically, each person's story and the journey of the siblings is fleshed out, from the day they were missing, throughout the journey, you really get a sense of what it means to 'lose' someone. And that's what it feels like these families are dealing with a 'lost' and for some it ends in tragedy, but for others it ends with a resolution. The families of the long lost it is just day on day on, guilt and hope. A really great book for all the right reasons. It made me visit the Australian missing persons register and I know that I'm going to be sharing on my socials the faces of the vanished. Put it on top of the TBR pile.
Ziggi, 29/06/2023