The Last Child

Johnny Merrimon is a 13-year-old who has been living in hell, and the author’s opening paragraph is intense: “Johnny learned early. If somebody asked him why he was so different, why he held himself so still and why his eyes seemed to swallow light, that’s what he’d tell them. He learned early that there was no safe place, not the backyard or the playground, not the front porch or the quiet road that grazed the edge of town. No safe place, and no one to protect you.” John Hart wrote, “Childhood was illusion.” Alyssa, Johnny’s twin sister, had gone missing a year earlier. Their father, Spencer, had been late to pick her up after school, and someone scooped her up when she attempted to get home on her own. There was no clue as to what might have happened to her, and even Detective Hunt, who was obsessed with the case, could make no headway into Alyssa’s disappearance. Johnny’s mother, Katherine, was the most beautiful woman in this backwoods North Carolina township, and she would not let her husband forget his mistake. Hart wrote, “Too much pain. Too much guilt.” Two weeks after Alyssa’s disappearance, Spencer just left – so Johnny’s loss was two-fold. And then it became three-fold when his mother sank into depression and drug abuse.

Hart led the reader through a series of great characters in this mystery. Ken was the richest guy in town who took advantage of the beautiful Katherine’s depression and addiction. He was abusive to her and Johnny. In the face of his mother’s deterioration, Social Services was circling closer and closer to removing Johnny from his home. Detective Hunt’s obsession led to the dissolution of his own marriage and alienation from his own troubled teenage son, Allen.

Then another girl, Tiffany Shore went missing. As Johnny continued his own search for clues about his sister, he witnessed the death of David Wilson as he plunged off a bridge at the end of a crash, his motorcycle having been knocked over by a pursuing car. His last words to Johnny were that he had found the missing girl, but he died before he could say if it was Alyssa or Tiffany. And what about Johnny’s best friend Jack and his star baseball playing brother, Gerald. And Levi Freemantle, the giant of a man who wondered about in the backwoods talking to himself and god.

Hart tied this altogether in believable and captivating way. It’s dark, perhaps as best captured by Detective Hunt’s longtime partner, John Yoakum who said, “I expect the worst and the worst rarely disappoints.” Each of us at MRB has reviewed a Hart book, and we’ve each come away with respect for his work, but also somewhat shaken by the depth and power of his writing.