In Gilly Macmillan's Burnt Paper Sky we meet Rachel Jenner, whose eight-year-old son Ben disappeared when she let him run ahead of her in the woods, and James Clemo, the detective put in charge of finding Ben.
Macmillan has obviously taken inspiration from various cases of missing children that have hit the headlines in recent years, but in Burnt Paper Sky she takes us into the world of the parents, beyond those headlines. We join Rachel a year after Ben's disappearance, as she recounts what happened - not just her feelings and fears over the disappearance and what was happening to Ben, but her paranoia, the way other people looked at her, the way the media was on her side and then wasn't, the way one simple, gut reaction resulted in everyone seeing Rachel as a completely different person. Macmillan examines the psyche of a woman who is facing judgement from all sides when all she wants is for her son to be found, and the psyche of people like us - members of the public, the media - who watch from the sidelines when something like this happens. And judge. And form opinions about something we really have no idea about.
