You Believers

Written by Jane Bradley

Narrated by T. Ryder Smith and Susan Bennett

A young woman goes missing, and her mother uproots her life to find her daughter. A professional searcher with uncanny empathetic skill works to find the missing and to comfort desperate loved ones left behind. A tortured young man hell-bent on destruction leaves a trail of pain, sorrow and even hope, as he moves through the lives of friends, loved ones, and strangers. You Believers explores the ripple effects of a random crime. It takes you on a journey through hell and back, a journey that offers insight on how we can endure horrible events with faith, strength, and grace. Amidst the darkness there are flickers of hope as characters move from unspeakable horrors, and in the end celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit. Bradley portrays this world with a vision that is at once ruthless and utterly compassionate. Under her hand, it is not just the mystery of the hunt or the heartbreaking search for a woman that keeps us locked within the layers of story; rather, it is the deeper mystery explored here, the search for logic, meaning, and redemption, in the domino force that is human nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781464024443

Jane Bradley

Jane Bradley has received a NEA Fellowship and several other awards for her fiction. Her collection of stories Power Lines, was published by the University of Arkansas Press and listed as an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times. She is also an award winning playwright, and is currently teaching creative writing at the University of Toledo, working on various writing projects, and traveling whenever she has the chance.

Reviews for You Believers

[jepeters333 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When a young woman goes missing, a professional searcher with uncanny empathetic skill works heroically to find her. A powerful, cathartic story of casual evil and of how even the worst things can and must be faced. Part Southern gothic, part crime, part haunting suspense story. You Believers takes us on an infinitely harrowing journey that rewards the reader with insight into how we might endure horrible events with faith, strength, and grace even while it reveals the ripple effects of random violence. Offering a vision that is both ruthless and utterly compassionate, Bradley celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit and renders the search for logic, meaning, redemption and hope in the domino force that is human nature.

[bluesgal79 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Multiple voices are employed to stunning effect in this novel of those who are lost and those who find. Bradley's powerful writing catapults the story of a missing young woman into an engrossing character study that examines in meaningful and sometimes unexpectedly moving ways the actions of all the players in the story: those who love and miss her; those who search for her with their own versions of hope; and those who are responsible for her being lost. The voice of Shelby Waters, the finder, is particularly strong, and resonates with equal parts compassion, hope, and world-weariness. Thank you, Ms. Bradley, for being bold enough to allow your characters to have all their gray areas. When a writer trusts her readers enough to do that it's an honor to spend time lost in their words.

Favorite Passage

My momma, she kept pretty plain, but she liked to look at colorful things. She liked to serve pinto beans in the pale blue bowl. And cornbread on the dark blue plates. She liked to serve the bacon on the yellow platter. I never knew that old Fiestaware was worth anything. I just wanted it because my momma loved it...There's often much comfort in useless things like the choice of pinto beans in a pale blue bowl and not the white.

[voracious_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I admit that I bought this book primarily for the creepy cover. I can't believe that the book hasn't sold more copies based on the cover alone! This is a story of a girl that goes missing, though the details of her abduction aren't really a mystery to the reader, since we see Katy get abducted from a first person perspective early on in the book. The novel is told from alternating points of view and Katy, her killer, her mother, her fiance', the woman who specializes in finding the missing, and other involved characters lend their points of view. There are some supernatural elements to the story but they are very minimal, unlike what the cover would suggest. There is also a subtle Christian fiction theme in there, though not so much as to detract from the story. I really enjoyed most of this story, but I have to admit there were parts that were almost too intense to read. It made me reluctant to pick the story up again because I was afraid of what would happen next. The villan, Jesse, is almost too real. He is a good-looking, charming, affluent kid from a nice neighborhood who was adopted at a young age, though clearly not young enough. His narcissism, entitlement, and sociopathy were well described and he was vividly realistic and terrifying. The other characters, though flawed, were likeable and characters I would have wanted to know. Rating this book is challenging because the story was really very good and well-written. However, I'm going to take a half star off because it was almost too hard to read. This is a dark, uncomfortable, terrifying story, with some goodness sprinkled in. It really examines the concepts of evil, what it is like to lose someone you love, and have to live with not knowing what happened to them. It really pulls on many emotional experiences, which for some, may be a little too intense (me!).

[maryintexas39 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

psychological suspense, grief-fiction

[ccourtland_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A heart-crushing tale of a girl lost, a girl saved and several who fall somewhere in between. All the characters are flawed and because of this, demand sympathy on some level. The juxtaposition of the characters poses the question when victimized, is it better to be killed or live. It examines what happens when we come out the other side of horrific events, how we are changed and what motivates us as individuals to move on, or not. Most would say this is obvious, but is it? What does it mean to live through an unspeakable violation and event whether as a sister, mother, father, or spouse -- or as the victim. Then, there are others to consider -- those who are also touched by evil because as Bradley shows, evil seldom takes a straight path. Pain splinters and fractures as it spreads like a web. Is it our reaction to such evils that continues to feed the fear and power of it? You Believers is horrifying not just because of subject matter, but also in the manner through which the story is told. The starkness is unrelenting and details paralyzing, not because of graphic depiction but rather through a realness that won't let the reader look away. At times, I felt as if my eyeballs were super-glued opened. It is impossible to detach from what is happening to all the characters emotionally, and because of this, can be downright exhausting. For those who have never experienced anything similar to the situation told in the story, hold on, because you are about to. For survivors of events, I warn the pages may contain a great deal of triggers that will be hard to get through. For example, there is a rape scene that is viewed from the perspective of the victim. Not a read to be considered lightly, but worthwhile to examine if you have the strength to face human helplessness and the grace to rise above it.