The Returned

By Jason Mott

'Jacob was time out of sync, time more perfect than it had been. He was life the way it was supposed to be all those years ago. That's what all the Returned were.'

The lives of Harold and Lucille Hargrave had been both joyful and sorrowful in the decades since their only son, Jacob, died tragically at his eighth birthday party in 1966. In their old age they've settled comfortably into life without him, their wounds tempered through the grace of time...until one day, Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep – flesh and blood, their sweet, precocious child, still eight years old.

All over the world people's loved ones are returning from beyond. No one knows how or why this is happening, whether it's a miracle or a sign of the end. Not even Harold and Lucille can agree on whether the boy is real or a wondrous imitation, but one thing they know for sure: he's their son.

As chaos erupts around the globe, the newly reunited Hargrave family finds itself at the centre of a community on the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.

With spare, elegant prose and searing emotional depth, award–winning poet Jason Mott explores timeless questions of faith and morality, love and responsibility. A spellbinding and stunning debut, The Returned is an unforgettable story that marks the arrival of an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

'In his exceptional debut novel, poet Mott brings drama, pathos, joy, horror and redemption to a riveting tale.' – Publishers Weekly, starred review.

'White–hot debut.' – Entertainment Weekly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Sep 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781743641156

Jason Mott

Jason Mott holds a BA in fiction and an MFA in poetry and is the author of two poetry collections. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, and he was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. Jason lives in North Carolina.

Book preview

One

HAROLD OPENED THE door that day to find a dark-skinned man in a well-cut suit smiling at him. At first he thought of reaching for his shotgun, but then he remembered that Lucille had made him sell it years ago on account of an incident involving a traveling preacher and an argument having to do with hunting dogs.

Can I help you? Harold said, squinting in the sunlight—light which only made the dark-skinned man in the suit look darker.

Mr. Hargrave? the man said.

I suppose, Harold replied.

Who is it, Harold? Lucille called. She was in the living room being vexed by the television. The news announcer was talking about Edmund Blithe, the first of the Returned, and how his life had changed now that he was alive again.

Better the second time around? the announcer on the television asked, speaking directly into the camera, laying the burden of answering squarely on the shoulders of his viewers.

The wind rustled through the oak tree in the yard near the house, but the sun was low enough that it drove horizontally beneath the branches and into Harold’s eyes. He held a hand over his eyes like a visor, but still, the dark-skinned man and the boy were little more than silhouettes plastered against a green-and-blue backdrop of pine trees beyond the open yard and cloudless sky out past the trees. The man was thin, but square-framed in his manicured suit. The boy was small for what Harold estimated to be about the age of eight or nine.

Harold blinked. His eyes adjusted more.

Who is it, Harold? Lucille called a second time, after realizing that no reply had come to her first inquiry.

Harold only stood in the doorway, blinking like a hazard light, looking down at the boy, who consumed more and more of his attention. Synapses kicked on in the recesses of his brain. They crackled to life and told him who the boy was standing next to the dark-skinned stranger. But Harold was sure his brain was wrong. He made his mind to do the math again, but it still came up with the same answer.

In the living room the television camera cut away to a cluster of waving fists and yelling mouths, people holding signs and shouting, then soldiers with guns standing statuesque as only men laden with authority and ammunition can. In the center was the small semidetached house of Edmund Blithe, the curtains drawn. That he was somewhere inside was all that was known.

Lucille shook her head. Can you imagine it? she said. Then: Who is it at the door, Harold?

Harold stood in the doorway taking in the sight of the boy: short, pale, freckled, with a shaggy mop of brown hair. He wore an old-style T-shirt, a pair of jeans and a great look of relief in his eyes—eyes that were not still and frozen, but trembling with life and rimmed with tears.

What has four legs and goes ‘Boooo’? the boy asked in a shaky voice.

Harold cleared his throat—not certain just then of even that. I don’t know, he said.

A cow with a cold!

Then the child had the old man by the waist, sobbing, Daddy! Daddy! before Harold could confirm or deny. Harold fell against the door frame—very nearly bowled over—and patted the child’s head out of some long-dormant paternal instinct. Shush, he whispered. Shush.

Harold? Lucille called, finally looking away from the television, certain that some terror had darkened her door. Harold, what’s going on? Who is it?

Harold licked his lips. It’s...it’s...

He wanted to say Joseph.

It’s Jacob, he said, finally.

Thankfully for Lucille, the couch was there to catch her when she fainted.

* * *

Jacob William Hargrave died on August 15, 1966. On his eighth birthday, in fact. In the years that followed, townsfolk would talk about his death in the late hours of the night when they could not sleep. They would roll over to wake their spouses and begin whispered conversations about the uncertainty of the world and how blessings needed to be counted. Sometimes they would rise together from the bed to stand in the doorway of their children’s bedroom to watch them sleep and to ponder silently on the nature of a God that would take a child so soon from this world. They were Southerners in a small town, after all: How could such a tragedy not lead them to God?

After Jacob’s death, his mother, Lucille, would say that she’d known something terrible was going to happen that day on account of what had happened just the night before.

That night Lucille dreamed of her teeth falling out. Something her mother had told her long ago was an omen of death.

All throughout Jacob’s birthday party Lucille had made a point to keep an eye on not only her son and the other children, but on all the other guests, as well. She flitted about like a nervous sparrow, asking how everyone was doing and if they’d had enough to eat and commenting on how much they’d slimmed down since last time she’d seen them or on how tall their children had gotten and, now and again, how beautiful the weather was. The sun was everywhere and everything was green that day.

Her unease made her a wonderful hostess. No child went unfed. No guest found themselves lacking conversation. She’d even managed to talk Mary Green into singing for them later in the evening. The woman had a voice silkier than sugar, and Jacob, if he was old enough to have a crush on someone, had a thing for her, something that Mary’s husband, Fred, often ribbed the boy about. It was a good day, that day. A good day, until Jacob disappeared.

He slipped away unnoticed the way only children and other small mysteries can. It was sometime between three and three-thirty—as Harold and Lucille would later tell the police—when, for reasons only the boy and the earth itself knew, Jacob made his way over the south side of the yard, down past the pines, through the forest and on down to the river, where, without permission or apology, he drowned.

* * *

Just days before the man from the Bureau showed up at their door Harold and Lucille had been discussing what they might do if Jacob turned up Returned.

They’re not people, Lucille said, wringing her hands. They were on the porch. All important happenings occurred on the porch.

We couldn’t just turn him away, Harold told his wife. He stamped his foot. The argument had turned very loud very quickly.

They’re just not people, she repeated.

Well, if they’re not people, then what are they? Vegetable? Mineral? Harold’s lips itched for a cigarette. Smoking always helped him get the upper hand in an argument with his wife which, he suspected, was the real reason she made such a fuss about the habit.

Don’t be flippant with me, Harold Nathaniel Hargrave. This is serious.

Flippant?

Yes, flippant! You’re always flippant! Always prone to flippancy!

I swear. Yesterday it was, what, ‘loquacious’? So today it’s ‘flippant,’ huh?

Don’t mock me for trying to better myself. My mind is still as sharp as it always was, maybe even sharper. And don’t you go trying to get off subject.

Flippant. Harold smacked the word, hammering the final t at the end so hard a glistening bead of spittle cleared the porch railing. Hmph.

Lucille let it pass. I don’t know what they are, she continued. She stood. Then sat again. All I know is they’re not like you and me. They’re...they’re... She paused. She prepared the word in her mouth, putting it together carefully, brick by brick. They’re devils, she finally said. Then she recoiled, as if the word might turn and bite her. They’ve just come here to kill us. Or tempt us! These are the end days. ‘When the dead shall walk the earth.’ It’s in the Bible!

Harold snorted, still hung up on flippant. His hand went to his pocket. Devils? he said, his mind finding its train of thought as his hand found his cigarette lighter. "Devils are superstitions. Products of small minds and even smaller imaginations. There’s one word that should be banned from the dictionary— devils. Ha! Now there’s a flippant word. It’s got nothing to do with the way things really are, nothing to do with these ‘Returned’ folks—and make no mistake about it, Lucille Abigail Daniels Hargrave, they are people. They can walk over and kiss you. I ain’t never met a devil that could do that...although, before we were married, there was this one blonde girl over in Tulsa one Saturday night. Yeah, now she might have been the devil, or a devil at least."

Hush up! Lucille barked, so loudly she seemed to surprise herself. I won’t sit here and listen to you talk that way.

Talk what way?

It wouldn’t be our boy, she said, her words slowing as the seriousness of things came drifting back to her, like the memory of a lost son, perhaps. Jacob’s gone on to God, she said. Her hands had become thin, white fists in her lap.

A silence came.

Then it passed.

Where is it? Harold asked.

What?

In the Bible, where is it?

Where’s what?

Where does it say ‘the dead will walk the earth’?

Revelations! Lucille opened her arms as she said the word, as if the question could not be any more addle-brained, as if she’d been asked about the flight patterns of pine trees. It’s right there in Revelations! ‘The dead shall walk the earth’! She was glad to see that her hands were still fists. She waved them at no one, the way people in movies sometimes did.

Harold laughed. What part of Revelations? What chapter? What verse?

You hush up, she said. That it’s in there is all that matters. Now hush!

Yes, ma’am, Harold said. Wouldn’t want to be flippant.

* * *

But when the devil actually showed up at the front door—their own particular devil—small and wondrous as he had been all those years ago, his brown eyes slick with tears, joy and the sudden relief of a child who has been too long away from his parents, too long of a time spent in the company of strangers...well...Lucille, after she recovered from her fainting episode, melted like candle wax right there in front of the clean-cut, well-suited man from the Bureau. For his part, the Bureau man took it well enough. He smiled a practiced smile, no doubt having witnessed this exact scene more than a few times in recent weeks.

There are support groups, the Bureau man said. Support groups for the Returned. And support groups for the families of the Returned. He smiled.

He was found, the man continued—he’d given them his name but both Harold and Lucille were already terrible at remembering people’s names and having been reunited with their dead son didn’t do much to help now, so they thought of him simply as the Man from the Bureau "—in a small fishing village outside Beijing, China. He was kneeling at the edge of a river, trying to catch fish or some such from what I’ve been told. The local people, none of whom spoke English well enough for him to understand, asked him his name in Mandarin, how he’d gotten there, where he was from, all those questions you ask when coming upon a lost child.

When it was clear that language was something of a barrier, a group of women were able to calm him. He’d started crying—and why wouldn’t he? The man smiled again. After all, he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. But they settled him down. Then they found an English-speaking official and, well... He shrugged his shoulders beneath his dark suit, indicating the insignificance of the rest of the story. Then he added, It’s happening like this all over.

He paused again. He watched with a smile that was not disingenuous as Lucille fawned over the son who was suddenly no longer dead. She clutched him to her chest and kissed the crown of his head, then cupped his face in her hands and showered it with kisses and laughter and tears.

Jacob replied in kind, giggling and laughing, but not wiping away his mother’s kisses even though he was at that particular point in youth when wiping away a mother’s kisses was what seemed most appropriate to him.

It’s a unique time for everyone, the man from the Bureau said.

Kamui Yamamoto

The brass bell chimed lightly as he entered the convenience store. Outside someone was just pulling away from the gas pump and did not see him. Behind the counter a plump, red-faced man halted his conversation with a tall, lanky man and the two of them stared. The only sound was the low hum of the freezers. Kamui bowed low, the brass bell chiming a second time as the door closed behind him.

The men behind the counter still did not speak.

He bowed a second time, smiling. Forgive me, he said, and the men jumped. I surrender. He held his hands in the air.

The red-faced man said something that Kamui could not understand. He looked at the lanky man and the two of them spoke at length, glancing sideways as they did. Then the red-faced man pointed at the door. Kamui turned, but saw only the empty street and the rising sun behind him. I surrender, he said a second time.

He’d left his pistol buried next to a tree at the edge of the woods in which he’d found himself only a few hours ago, just as the other men had. He had even removed the jacket of his uniform and his hat and left them, as well, so that, now, he stood in the small gas station at the break of day in his undershirt, pants and well-shined boots. All this to avoid being killed by the Americans. Yamamoto desu, he said. Then: I surrender.

The red-faced man spoke again, louder this time. Then the second man joined him, both of them yelling and motioning in the direction of the door. I surrender, Kamui said yet again, fearing the way their voices were rising. The lanky man grabbed a soda can from the counter and threw it at him. It missed, and the man yelled again and pointed toward the door again and began searching for something else to throw.

Thank you, Kamui managed, though he knew it was not what he wanted to say. His English vocabulary was limited to very few words. He backed toward the door. The red-faced man reached beneath the counter and found a can of something. He threw it with a grunt. The can struck Kamui above the left temple. He fell back against the door. The brass bell rang.

The red-faced man threw more cans while the lanky man yelled and searched for objects of his own to throw until, stumbling, Kamui fled the gas station, his hands above him, proving that he was not armed and meant to do nothing other than turn himself in. His heart beat in his ears.

Outside, the sun had risen and the city was cast a soft orange. It looked peaceful.

With a trickle of blood running down the side of his head, he raised his hands into the air and walked down the street. I surrender! he yelled, waking the town, hoping the people he found would let him live.

Two

OF COURSE, EVEN for people returning from the dead, there was paperwork. The International Bureau of the Returned was receiving funding faster than it could spend it. And there wasn’t a single country on the planet that wasn’t willing to dig into treasury reserves or go into debt to try and secure whatever in they could with the Bureau due to the fact that it was the only organization on the planet that was able to coordinate everything and everyone.

The irony was that no one within the Bureau knew more than anyone else. All they were really doing were counting people and giving them directions home. That was it.

* * *

When the emotion had died down and the hugging and all stopped in the doorway of the Hargraves’ little house—nearly a half hour later—Jacob was moved into the kitchen where he could sit at the table and catch up on all the eating he’d missed in his absence. The Bureau man sat in the living room with Harold and Lucille, took his stacks of paperwork from a brown, leather briefcase and got down to business.

When did the returning individual originally die? asked the Bureau man, who—for a second time—revealed his name as Agent Martin Bellamy.

Do we have to say that? Lucille asked. She inhaled and sat straighter in her seat, suddenly looking very regal and discriminating, having finally straightened her long, silver hair that had come undone while fawning over her son.

Say what? Harold replied.

She means ‘die,’ Agent Bellamy said.

Lucille nodded.

What’s wrong with saying he died? Harold asked, his voice louder than he’d planned. Jacob was still within eyesight, if mostly out of earshot.

Shush!

He died, Harold said. No sense in pretending he didn’t. He didn’t notice, but his voice was lower now.

Martin Bellamy knows what I mean, Lucille said. She wrung her hands in her lap, looking for Jacob every few seconds, as if he were a candle in a house of drafts.

Agent Bellamy smiled. It’s okay, he said. This is pretty common, actually. I should have been more considerate. Let’s start again, shall we? He looked down at his questionnaire. When did the returning individual—

Where are you from?

Sir?

Where are you from? Harold was standing by the window looking out at the blue sky.

You sound like a New Yorker, Harold said.

Is that good or bad? Agent Bellamy asked, pretending he had not been asked about his accent a dozen times since being assigned to the Returned of southern North Carolina.

It’s horrible, Harold said. But I’m a forgiving man.

Jacob, Lucille interrupted. Call him Jacob, please. His name is Jacob.

Yes, ma’am, Agent Bellamy said. I’m sorry. I should know better by now.

Thank you, Martin Bellamy, Lucille said. Again, somehow, her hands were fists in her lap. She breathed deeply and, with concentration, unfolded them. Thank you, Martin Bellamy, she said again.

When did Jacob leave? Agent Bellamy asked again softly.

August 15, 1966, Harold said. He moved into the doorway, looking unsettled. He licked his lips. His hands took turns moving from the pockets of his worn, old pants up to his worn, old lips, finding no peace—or cigarette—on either side of the journey.

Agent Bellamy made notes.

How did it happen?

* * *

The word Jacob became an incantation that day as the searchers looked for the boy. At regular intervals the call went up. Jacob! Jacob Hargrave! And then another voice lifted the name and passed it down the line. Jacob! Jacob!

In the beginning their voices trampled upon one another in a cacophony of fear and desperation. But then the boy was not quickly found and, to save their throats, the men and women of the search party took turns shouting out as the sun turned gold and dripped down the horizon and was swallowed first by the tall trees and then by the low brush.

Then they were all trudging drunkenly—exhausted from high-stepping through the dense bramble, wrung out from worry. Fred Green was there with Harold. We’ll find him, Fred said again and again. Did you see that look in his eyes when he unwrapped that BB gun I gave him? You ever seen a boy so excited? Fred huffed, his legs burning from fatigue. We’ll find him. He nodded. We’ll find him.

Then it was full-on night and the bushy, pine-laden landscape of Arcadia sparkled with the glow of flashlights.

When they neared the river Harold was glad he’d talked Lucille into staying back at the house—He might come back, he had said, and he’ll want his mama—because he knew, by whatever means such things are known, that he would find his son in the river.

Harold sloshed knee-deep in the shallows—slowly, taking a step, calling the boy’s name, pausing to listen out in case he should be somewhere nearby, calling back, taking another step, calling the boy’s name again, and on and on.

When he finally came upon the body, the moonlight and the water had shone the boy to a haunting and beautiful silver, the same color as the glimmering water.

Dear God, Harold said. And that was the last time he would ever say it.

* * *

Harold told the story, hearing suddenly all the years in his voice. He sounded like an old man, hardened and rough. Now and again as he spoke, he would reach a thick, wrinkled hand to run over the few thin, gray strands still clinging to his scalp. His hands were decorated with liver spots and his knuckles were swollen from the arthritis that sometimes bothered him. It didn’t bother him as badly as it did some other people his age, but it did just enough to remind him of the wealth of youth that was not his anymore. Even as he spoke, his lower back jolted with a small twinge of pain.

Hardly any hair. Mottled skin. His large, round head. His wrinkled, wide ears. Clothes that seemed to swallow him up no matter how hard Lucille tried to find something that fit him better. No doubt about it: he was an old man now.

Something about having Jacob back—still young and vibrant—made Harold Hargrave realize his age.

Lucille, just as old and gray as her husband, only looked away as he spoke, only watched her eight-year-old son sit at the kitchen table eating a slice of pecan pie as if, just now, it were 1966 again and nothing was wrong and nothing would ever be wrong again. Sometimes she would clear a silver strand of hair from her face, but if she caught sight of her thin, liver-spotted hands, they did not seem to bother her.

They were a pair of thin, wiry birds, Harold and Lucille. She outgrew him in these later years. Or, rather, he shrank faster than she so that, now, he had to look up at her when they argued. And Lucille also had the benefit of not wasting away quite as much as he had—something she blamed upon his years of cigarette smoking. Her dresses still fit her. Her thin, long arms were nimble and articulate where his, hidden beneath the puffiness of shirts that fit him too loosely, made him look a bit more vulnerable than he used to. Which was giving her an edge these days.

Lucille took pride in that, and did not feel quite so guilty about it, even though she sometimes thought she should.

Agent Bellamy wrote until his hand cramped and then he wrote more. He’d had the forethought to record the interview, but he still found it good policy to write things down, as well. People seemed offended if they met with a government man and nothing was written down. This worked for Agent Bellamy. His brain was the type that preferred to see things rather than hear them. If he didn’t write it all down now he’d just be stuck doing it later.

Bellamy wrote from the time the birthday party began that day in 1966. He wrote through the recounting of Lucille’s weeping and guilt—she’d been the last one to see Jacob alive; she only remembered a brief image of one of his pale arms as he darted around a corner, chasing one of the other children. Bellamy wrote that there were almost more people at the funeral than the church could hold.

But there were parts of the interview that he did not write. Details that, out of respect, he committed only to memory rather than to bureaucratic documentation.

Harold and Lucille had survived the boy’s death, but only just. The next fifty-odd years became infected with a peculiar type of loneliness, a tactless loneliness that showed up unbidden and began inappropriate conversations over Sunday dinner. It was a loneliness they never named and seldom talked about. They only shuffled around it with their breaths held, day in and day out, as if it were an atom smasher—reduced in scale but not in complexity or splendor—suddenly shown up in the center of the living room and dead set on affirming all the most ominous and far-fetched speculations of the harsh way the universe genuinely worked.

In its own way, that was a truth of sorts.

Over the years they not only became accustomed to hiding from their loneliness, they became skilled at it. It was a game, almost: don’t talk about the Strawberry Festival, because he had loved it; don’t stare too long at buildings you admire because they will remind you of the time you said he would grow into an architect one day; ignore the children in whose face you see him.

When Jacob’s birthday came around each year they would spend the day being somber and having difficulty making conversation. Lucille might take to weeping with no explanation, or Harold might smoke a little more that day than he had the day before.

But that was only in the beginning. Only in those first, sad years.

They grew older.

Doors closed.

Harold and Lucille had become so far removed from the tragedy of Jacob’s death that when the boy reappeared at their front door—smiling, still perfectly assembled and unaged, still their blessed son, still only eight years old—all of it was so far away that Harold had forgotten the boy’s name.

* * *

Then Harold and Lucille were done talking and there was silence. But despite its solemnity, it was short-lived. Because there was the sound of Jacob sitting at the kitchen table raking his fork across his plate, gulping down his lemonade and burping with great satisfaction. Excuse me, the boy yelled to his parents.

Lucille smiled.

Forgive me for asking this, Agent Bellamy began. And please, don’t take this as any type of accusation. It’s simply something we have to ask in order to better understand these...unique circumstances.

Here it comes, Harold said. His hands had finally stopped foraging for phantom cigarettes and settled into his pockets. Lucille waved her hand dismissively.

"What were things like between you and Jacob before?" Agent Bellamy asked.

Harold snorted. His body finally decided his right leg would better hold his weight than his left. He looked at Lucille. This is the part where we’re supposed to say we drove him off or something. Like they do on TV. We’re supposed to say that we’d had a fight with him, denied him supper, or some kind of abuse like you see on TV. Something like that. Harold walked over to a small table that stood in the hallway facing the front door. In the top drawer was a fresh pack of cigarettes.

Before he’d even made his way back to the living room Lucille opened fire. You will not!

Harold opened the wrapper with mechanical precision, as if his hands were not his own. He placed a cigarette, unlit, between his lips and scratched his wrinkled face and exhaled, long and slow. That’s all I needed, he said. That’s all.

Agent Bellamy spoke softly. "I’m not trying to say that you or

Reviews for The Returned

[loveatfirstbook · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A few months ago, I met up with Leah @ Books Speak Volumes and Shannon @ River City Reading. And not only was I happy to meet up with them and explore the Fountain Bookstore, Leah surprised Shannon & I with a bookish gift!Leah passed on The Returned by Jason Mott, and after hearing so much about it, I just had to read it.One of the first things I noticed about The Returned was how familiar it felt. Why was it familiar? I googled it, and while it’s being made into a TV show and there have been other TV shows about it, there’s nothing I connected with. Until a fabulous Twitter user mentioned that Stephen King had written a story called Sometimes They Come Back, which is in one of his short story anthologies (Night Shift).For the full review, visit Love at First Book

[arkrayder · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In its way this is a sad tale. What would happen if loved ones, who had passed away, suddenly came back. The way they were before their death. What would you tell them? What would you do to keep them with you? For me the Returned acted as though they had unfinished business to complete. The difference being they are “alive” instead of being spirits. They have all the weaknesses of regular living people. They can die “again”. Worth reading. Just don’t be expecting answers or reasons for any of the happenings.

[roses7184_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So, the concept of The Returned is really interesting. It's actually the reason I chose to read this book in the first place. Imagine if the dead came back. Not as zombies, but as living, breathing people. Just the same as the way they were when they died. As the dead come back, what happens to the lives of the people who lost them? That's what The Returned tackles, just not quite the way I expected.

What I was really hoping for here was a look at the way society can break apart in the face of something so big, and slowly start to deal with it. What I was given, was something a lot more flat than that. Despite everything, I never really felt connected to any of these characters. I think that if I had more knowledge of who the Returned were, why they came back, what their purpose was, I might have been more invested. Instead, everything was so vague. People come back, society tries to deal with them, they go away. End of story.

I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from this book. It was a quick enough read, but not something that every really grasped me. I think this was at one point a tv show? Or going to be a tv show? Maybe that would be a better medium, with more time to build things from the ground up. As for this book, I wasn't convinced.

[bethetter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Super good anti-zombie book. What would REALLY happen if people started coming back from the dead? The focus on one family w excerpts from news around the world makes this v compelling.

[melrailey-412132 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to both this book and the three short story prequels that went along with it. The prequels really intrigued me. I loved them and could wait to get more. We got a little bit of that feeling in The Returned but it was drug out a lot more and the story got fleshed out a lot. I thought the characters of Harold and Lucille were well developed. In truth, I think that what The Returned is - a story about characters because there's not a lot of plot. But what characters they are. I enjoyed it a lot.

Tom Stechschulte is a great narrator. I don't recall ever listening to any of his work before but I think he was terrific here and he will be a definite selling point on future audiobooks.

[bookscookslooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one thought provoking novel. Just imagine sitting in your living room and hearing a knock on the door. When you open it you see a government official and your 8 year old son who died 30 years ago. He is one of The Returned - dead people suddenly popping up all over world but no one knows how or why they are Returning. Are they human? If not, what are they?As more and more people Return the government scrambles to handle them and finally makes the decision to intern them "for their safety." But soon there are too many for the camps to hold and some of the living do not behave well. All the while the reader is given snippets of the lives of various Returnees who are just as confused.If you think of what might happen if the dead started coming back just imagine how it could cause consternation; the Returned have their memories so if they were murdered there are people who would now be afraid of discovery. There would be abusers in fear of being called out. Add guilt to the fear of the unknown and you have a world in total confusion. Mix in some Biblical end times and you have a novel that keeps you reading until the very end. Do you get all the answers? No, but you get a ripping good read with characters that are both distant and close, intense and cold. This is a book I'll read again for I suspect it will be a different book at a different time.

[leahmo-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the decades since their 8-year-old son’s tragic drowning, Harold and Lucille Hargrave have learned to cope with their pain. Although the death of their only child created an unfillable hole in their marriage, they have moved on and settled into a mostly comfortable life. However, old wounds are reopened when Jacob, their son, turns up on their doorstep looking exactly as he did on the day he died.Such occurrences have been happening all over the world. People who had died are returning to life, popping up in unexpected places. It’s clear that they are not zombies, but no one can agree what exactly they are or what should be done with them. This phenomenon becomes so common that an organization called The International Bureau of the Returned is formed to handle the formerly dead.When a man from the Bureau returns Jacob to his parents, who are now in their 70s, they are conflicted about their feelings. Lucille sees his second chance at life as a miracle and is thrilled to have her son restored to her, but Harold is unnerved by Jacob’s sudden appearance. The boy’s been dead for nearly 50 years; surely the child standing before Harold with all of Jacob’s memories can’t really be his son?The small, rural Southern town where the Hargraves live becomes somewhat of a hotspot for the Returned, and their presence causes a host of problems. Old tensions resurface as the town is confronted with the reminder of an unsolved mystery, and residents are divided by their convictions about what should be done with the Returned.The concept behind this novel is a fascinating one; we often wish lost loved ones could be returned to us, but how would we feel if they actually were? What would the greater ramifications be if dead people began coming back to life? However, I thought the execution was lacking. I was left with far too many questions for this novel to really be satisfying. I don’t need to know why the dead returned (because I think that if this really happened, we would have no idea), but I wanted to know more about their experiences. What’s the last thing the remember before returning? How do they feel about being returned? Do they see everything as it was before, or how do they so easily accept the massive changes that have occurred since their deaths? What do they want from their second shot at life? Not enough questions were answered.That said, Mott does a great job of evoking the setting of the close-knit town of Arcadia, and I liked the way he builds characters. I would have liked to know more about Harold and Lucille’s life since Jacob died, but I loved the way Mott slowly spins backstories that make some of his secondary characters come to life.I also really enjoyed how the main story is interspersed with short vignettes written from the point of view of different Returned people. Many of them were touching, sad, or warm, and I loved being able to read about the experiences of the Returned.All in all, this book has a great concept, but it left me with a lot of unanswered questions. It’s an easy book to become quickly absorbed in, and I would recommend it to readers who enjoyed The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker and The Leftovers by Tom Perotta.Read the full review at Books Speak Volumes.

[bgknighton · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Touching, enrapturing, but a little long. What happens after death? What would happen if your loved ones returned? Would it be good if they did?

[bragan_8 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The dead are returning. They're not ghosts, not zombies, just our departed loved ones -- or perhaps reasonable copies thereof? -- suddenly reappearing, all over the world. One of the Returned is Jacob, an eight-year-old boy who died fifty years ago and is suddenly once again part of the lives of his now-elderly parents, who'd thought they'd lost him forever.It's a fantastic premise for a novel, and I was eagerly looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, the execution disappointed me greatly. There were, perhaps, tiny hints here and there of the book it could have been -- something subtle and deeply emotionally complicated and full of a sense of the mysteries of life and death and love -- but it just never quite got there for me, and I found that terribly frustrating.I think a big part of the problem is that I just never found any of the characters emotionally convincing. For example, the boy's mother, Lucille, is deeply religious and starts off the novel ranting about how the Returned are tools of Satan and a sign of the End Times, only to immediately do a one-eighty and declare her no-longer-dead child a miracle sent by God when he shows up on her doorstep. Now, that's not a change of heart that's hard to believe in, but the problem is that we're never given any sense of what's going on in her mind as that happens, or how she justifies it to herself (or fails to), or how it feels in any really deep way. Even though we spend a lot of time in that character's head throughout the course of the novel. And she's not the only one I felt that way about, either.And then there's the child himself. I think my sense of unease about this story really started when he shows up after having been dead for fifty years and immediately throws himself at his parents yelling "Mommy!' and "Daddy!", with absolutely no acknowledgment that they've aged so much they should be nearly unrecognizable to him. He's like that through the entire book, too. A hollow, depthless, plot device of a character. Which actually could have worked really well, if there were a sense that we were supposed to find him disturbing and uncanny, or if we were used really, really well as a mirror to reflect his parents' emotions. But if that's what Mott is going for, he doesn't exactly pull it off.Mostly, what the story ends up focusing on is a program put in place by the government to round up the Returned in camps, in part because so many people fear and resent them. But, while we're told about this fear and resentment, the reasons for it never felt particularly well-grounded. And, as social commentary, this storyline feels kind of shallow and over-familiar. I couldn't help thinking, the entire way through, how much better the TV show In the Flesh handled similar themes with actual zombies as the returned-from-the-dead characters.The writing didn't exactly thrill me, either. We'd get paragraphs or pages of slightly artificial-sounding dialog and okay but uninspired prose, then it'd seem like the author would suddenly realize he was supposed to be a "literary" writer and would throw in some odd, fancy turn of phrase or metaphor that, often as not, just would not work. (My favorite: "'Colonel Willis!' Lucille said, calling the man's name like shouting for a tax auditor." I mean... what?)Sigh.Rating: 2.5/5. And, OK, I feel kind of bad about that. It's not an awful book, I guess. I'm probably punishing it simply for not being the book I wanted to read. But, man, it was really, really not the book I wanted to read.

[angiestahl-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

More like a 3.5. It kind of reads like a personal journal fictionalized and wrapped into a different story to find a broader audience. Not perfectly told and not wholly satisfyingly, but worth a read and interesting to think about.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is something like what you'd get if you took a Stephen King book and removed all the gory and scary parts: an interesting if implausible story about a large handful of memorable characters, many of them very faith-driven, being driven to the extremes of their characters by something they don't understand. It's missing something (possibly those gory and scary parts, though I can't be sure), but I enjoyed it well enough. I'd recommend it to people who want Stephen King lite, or who like books like Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers.

[kellyn_903682 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this book very thought provoking; undoubtedly this was due, in part, to the death of my husband two years ago. I kept wondering what I would do if, like the Hargraves, I was I met my husband at the door. Would I want him to return, even for a short time; would I believe it was in fact him? The premise of the story was fascinating but often in the story I was frustrated by the lack of input from the "returned." Do they remember anything at all of the in-between-time? Was Mott simply telling the story from the point of view of those who lost loved ones? I also pondered the theological implications of this event. All in all this was a somewhat disturbing yet captivating book. I thought about the characters and my reaction to the story for many days after finishing. Maybe in the end that is a true sign of a great book. (I was also intrigued by the issue of race in the story; it was subtle but there)

[casualfriday_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Returned are dead people, back from the grave. They are not scary lurching zombies; as one character puts it, they are more like photocopies. While the phenomena is happening all over the world, the novel's action takes place in a small southern town where officials, threatened by the ever-increasing number of the Returned, round them up into concentration camps.The book didn't click for me, and I'm not sure why. It wasn't eerie enough for my taste. The Returned were mostly bland nonentities, which was obviously part of the point, but made the reading less fun. It could have been a close examination of the emotional crisis of a returning child, except it really wasn't. It could have been a rip-roaring apocalyptic suspense tale, except it really wasn't. It was perhaps too careful? And - for me - a little dull.

[blkhart13 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Definitely worth the read though I wish it had been longer. the characters were endearing, the plot thought provoking but it didn't seem to go into the details as far as I thought it should. All in all it was a good book.

[beetlebub2000_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

More like a 3.5. It kind of reads like a personal journal fictionalized and wrapped into a different story to find a broader audience. Not perfectly told and not wholly satisfyingly, but worth a read and interesting to think about.

[gpangel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Returned by Jason Mott is a 2013 Harlequin MIRA publication. Usually when I pick up a Harlequin MIRA novel, it's more on the side of contemporary romance or women's fiction. But, I saw this book while thumbing through the Overdrive library books, and will confess I misunderstood what the book was about when I checked it out. I was thinking the story was centered on the return of a missing child who was presumed dead, but this book is nothing at all like that. As the story opens, the reader learns that the dead are returning to earth. Not as ghost or zombies, but seemingly as real people. The catch is that they are the age they were when they died. So, when Jason shows up at his parent's home, he is still just a child, the same age he was when he died. Naturally, people are freaking out over this phenomenon, thinking it indicates the world is about to end, or suspicious about the returned, thinking they can't possibly be the actual person who died. In the midst of this fear and panic, people respond as they often do by taking extreme measures to ensure their sense of safety. But, as we shall see, the story is about more than the commentary on human nature, it's also about the fantasy of having a loved one return to us, giving us a chance to recapture what was stolen from us, by their death. The writing style was a bit different and took me some time to adjust to, but once I got accustomed to it, the story seemed to flow nicely with steady pacing and interesting dialogue. It's a very thought provoking and often moving story and I give the author kudos for having such vivid imagination and giving the reader a realistic conclusion to the story that didn't insult my intelligence. Although I can't say this book was my cup of tea, and is not the sort of story I usually go for, it was, I believe written with a sentimental and sweet intention, even if it did leave me feeling a little melancholy at times. It does end on an up swing though, even though we aren't given all the answers to the questions, I think it's more about taking a leap faith and having hope, about grabbing the opportunities you have right now, and holding on to whatever you are given, even if you experience some doubts, and about being thankful for that chance, and making the best of it. Be warned, if you are looking for the usual Harlequin fare, this isn't it, but it was certainly an interesting concept and a fascinating read. I recommend this one to readers of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction. 3.5 stars

[elizabethbevins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Returned is one of those "what if" stories. What if our long dead friends and family Returned? No, not as zombies but almost exact copies of who they were when they died. Almost. Just imagine...I love this kind of story that leaves you thinking even after then end.

[hadden_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting think piece novel. What would happen if the dead started coming back again? While many would be welcomed at first, over time they would begin to crowd out the current living. It reminds people that death allows for new people to come into the world, and if the dead came back, the resources would be stretched. Also, is it murder to kill someone who was already dead? Are they real people, or just photocopies of real people? An interesting premise, and I look forward to other books in what could be an enjoyable series.

[ahappybooker · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Returned After watching that awesomely creepy book trailer for The Returned, I knew I had to read this! Unfortunately, for me, the book didn't quite live up to the promise of the trailer. The story is kind of strange, as you would expect from a story about people returning from the dead, but it had the potential to be so much more than it was. The story reminds me of that show from some years back called The 4400 where people that had disappeared and were assumed dead began reappearing the same age they were when they left. This is exactly what happens in The Returned except those returning were definitely dead and buried, yet somehow they are back. Each chapter began with snippets of events throughout the world which highlighted the rising panic, mistrust of the returned, and the worldwide population problem this situation would present. I would have enjoyed seeing this explored further. However, most of the story's focus was on one small town where government authority, anti-government militia, and average citizen on both sides of the problem all come together. It took me over a week to plod through The Returned. One of the things didn't work for me is the same thing that always makes me lose interest in the story, a lack of connection to the characters. The premise was interesting enough, but I needed more than one dimensional characters to pull me into the story and make me feel any kind of way about it. Instead, I felt like I had read a news article discussing what happened with a few quotes from witnesses. I think that if there would have been more "showing" than telling, I could have enjoyed it more. As it was, the delivery was a bit flat, I didn't care about the characters, and so The Returned just didn't work for me. I have heard this was very quickly optioned for a TV series and I am interested to see how that pans out. I think this will translate much better to TV because the actors will be able to breathe life and personality into these characters on screen. Perhaps the right music and dramatic dialog will also add some nuance to what was, for me, a rather colorless story.

[djupstrom · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I like the idea of the book; departed loved ones reappearing. This is not a Zombie/return from the dead novel. I just wish the novel was as exciting as the idea. I didn't really care about any of the characters, and the plot was a bit thin. I will be interested in seeing the new television series that is being made.

[janesteen_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Where I got the book: passed on to me by a friend. Well, it was offered at a book club meeting and I POUNCED.In his Author's Note, Jason Mott tells us that the genesis of this novel was a dream in which his deceased mother was sitting at the table waiting for him when he got home--as if she'd never been gone--and they simply talked together about what had happened since her death. I too have had dreams where I engage in quite ordinary activities with long-dead relatives, and I welcome them; it's nice to have a chance to see them again.But supposing they all started coming back?The Returned takes this premise and underplays it beautifully. The focus of the story is Harold and Lucille Hargrave, an elderly couple so far moved on from the death of their son Jacob in 1966, when he was eight years old, that Harold momentarily forgets Jacob's name when he turns up on his doorstep in the company of an agent from the Bureau of the Returned. Their little Southern town of Arcadia becomes a hotspot in the government's attempts to contained the tide of new-again humanity.The Returned come back exactly as they left, with no memory of the space between their death and their new life. The phenomenon is never explained. For some of the True Living, as the never-been-dead come to be known, the return offers healing, reconciliation or the chance to settle unanswered questions about what a relationship really meant. For the rest of the True Living the Returned present a threat as they turn up in ever-increasing numbers, putting pressure on land and resources that the living regard as theirs.How could I resist this premise? And I loved the way Mott handled the story; completely believable, never predictable. Harold, Lucille and Jacob are beautifully drawn and the writing is superb and at times very moving. Lucille is religious but Harold is not--not since Jacob's death--allowing the author to explore different sides of the mystery of death. I loved both characters with their cantankerous old-people opinions overlaying the people they were before Jacob's death; that sense of an older person's body somehow containing the younger you was rendered very poignantly.Often I'll start a book with a great premise only to have the author disappoint me by the end, but it didn't happen here. I've been looking forward to reading this since I first heard about it and it was worth the wait.

[viviennestrauss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A truly intriguing book, a lot to think about. I was able to remain emotionally distant right up to the end. It was the author's note at the end when the tears finally flowed.

[amandacb_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So many unanswered questions and loose ends flail around in Mott's book, it is an exercise in frustration. How can one tell just by looking at them that certain people are Returned? How did they Return, and why did what started to happen at the middle/end happen? And so on and so on. If only Mott had taken the time to give us some answers instead of leaving TOO MUCH to the imagination, this could have been a fine piece of science fiction literature, which is rare these days. Mott is an excellent craftsman, but the resulting piece lacked crucial elements to make it a working and plausible piece.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not the French television series, Les Revenants, which I originally thought, but an American version along the same lines. In Arcadia, North Carolina, Harold and Lucille's son Jacob is returned to them - fifty years after he drowned in the river near their home. And he's not alone - soon Arcadia is teeming with the 'Returned', to the point where the town is commandeered by the military as a 'death camp'.I liked the idea of Jason Mott's novel - a second chance with lost loved ones, against the consequences of the dead returning to 'life' - but the plotting was a bit vague. Are the Returned zombies, risen from the grave, or corporeal ghosts? Why have they come back? Also, apart from a shootout between the Returned, with Harold and Lucille defending their son, and the local rednecks, nothing much happens. To quote: 'More Returned were returning. No one knew how or why'. Mott is great at character introspection, from the gruff Harold, god-fearing Lucille and troubled government man Martin Bellamy, but not so great at moving the action along. The open ending is both fitting and frustrating - I was left thinking, 'Huh?'Some great dialogue ('If there's one thing America will always lead the world in, it's assholes with guns'), thought-provoking questions and equally provoking lack of answers, annoying spelling mistakes, and nothing at all to do with the television series.

[teeth_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

People who have died years before begin to returnexactly as they were when they left and with no memory of anything that has passed. There were too many unaanswered questions in Mott's book This book left me frustrated and it was slow in many places altough thought provoking at times.

[melaniehope · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this book for it's intriguing plot and the characters. Imagine how people would react if the dead began returning to their life just as they were before they died. It was a bit frustrating as I was reading to see the reactions and how the general populous handled "The Returned." I was hoping that in reality people would not be that cold and suspicious towards each other.This book does a lot of exploring of our emotions and how we handle the unknown. Many of those returned were welcomed home, but no one was ever sure if they were really "real."The book does not give us answers to why and how this event occured. Instead we are introduced to a group of interesting characters and how they handle the return of their son and how some townspeople and the government deal with it, as well.

[tfs93 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

For me the story fell apart when the Returned were collected into camps. It was a little too reminiscent of the Holocaust to me. I liked the beginning of the story and found myself thinking of many questions that I wanted the answers to. You won't find those answers here. Much of the story is left open to your own interpretation. It is clear that Mott is a good writer and his work is dripping with emotion. I just didn't like where the story went toward the center of the book. I didn't really like the ending. I did appreciate that the author added notes at the end that helped explain his motivation for writing the story. Sadly I still didn't like the story. The Returned characters were all interesting, but there wasn't enough about any of them to actually flesh out their stories. I was left feeling disappointed.

[brokenteepee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one thought provoking novel. Just imagine sitting in your living room and hearing a knock on the door. When you open it you see a government official and your 8 year old son who died 30 years ago. He is one of The Returned - dead people suddenly popping up all over world but no one knows how or why they are Returning. Are they human? If not, what are they?As more and more people Return the government scrambles to handle them and finally makes the decision to intern them "for their safety." But soon there are too many for the camps to hold and some of the living do not behave well. All the while the reader is given snippets of the lives of various Returnees who are just as confused.If you think of what might happen if the dead started coming back just imagine how it could cause consternation; the Returned have their memories so if they were murdered there are people who would now be afraid of discovery. There would be abusers in fear of being called out. Add guilt to the fear of the unknown and you have a world in total confusion. Mix in some Biblical end times and you have a novel that keeps you reading until the very end. Do you get all the answers? No, but you get a ripping good read with characters that are both distant and close, intense and cold. This is a book I'll read again for I suspect it will be a different book at a different time.

[a.happy.booker · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Returned After watching that awesomely creepy book trailer for The Returned, I knew I had to read this! Unfortunately, for me, the book didn't quite live up to the promise of the trailer. The story is kind of strange, as you would expect from a story about people returning from the dead, but it had the potential to be so much more than it was. The story reminds me of that show from some years back called The 4400 where people that had disappeared and were assumed dead began reappearing the same age they were when they left. This is exactly what happens in The Returned except those returning were definitely dead and buried, yet somehow they are back. Each chapter began with snippets of events throughout the world which highlighted the rising panic, mistrust of the returned, and the worldwide population problem this situation would present. I would have enjoyed seeing this explored further. However, most of the story's focus was on one small town where government authority, anti-government militia, and average citizen on both sides of the problem all come together. It took me over a week to plod through The Returned. One of the things didn't work for me is the same thing that always makes me lose interest in the story, a lack of connection to the characters. The premise was interesting enough, but I needed more than one dimensional characters to pull me into the story and make me feel any kind of way about it. Instead, I felt like I had read a news article discussing what happened with a few quotes from witnesses. I think that if there would have been more "showing" than telling, I could have enjoyed it more. As it was, the delivery was a bit flat, I didn't care about the characters, and so The Returned just didn't work for me. I have heard this was very quickly optioned for a TV series and I am interested to see how that pans out. I think this will translate much better to TV because the actors will be able to breathe life and personality into these characters on screen. Perhaps the right music and dramatic dialog will also add some nuance to what was, for me, a rather colorless story.

[muddyboy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

People start to come back from the dead many , many years after their deaths. At first this seems to be a great blessing as families are reunited with long lost loved ones. However, after a time "The Returned" start to come back in mass. This will lead to a world of over population. The world becomes increasing hostile to these once dead people reappearing as they are shipped to camps and who knows what else. The story revolves around Harold and Lucille Hargrave who had a son who had drowned at the age of eight. They are on a quest to save him from people who want to see him "gone". This is a very creative book that asks a sincere question as to how we would react and individuals and a country if this scenario would occur. I am really on the fence about this myself. Quite thought provoking.