Where did everyone go?

 

Imagine living in a small town where everyone knows everyone else.  Then imagine that on one fateful day, the entire population of the town mysteriously disappears.  That’s what happens to the inhabitants of the small Swedish mining town of Silvertjärn in 1959 in the book The Lost Village.  Two policemen checking on the welfare of the village come across a terrible scene:  a dead body tied to a pole in the middle of the town square.  The inhabitants of the village are all missing, except for one baby left in the village school.  In the present day, five young people set out to visit the still remote area where Silvertjärn remains in ruins in order to work on a documentary about what happened in the town and to solve the mystery.  Alice, the driving force behind the project, is the granddaughter of a woman who left the village just before everyone disappeared.  Alice has grown up listening to her grandmother’s stories about the village and her missing relatives, and she decides to tell the story to the world.  The documentary film project is still short of funding, so on this trip, the 5 crew members are planning to make a short film to drum up interest (and hopefully investors) for the full-length project.  The modern-day events are interspersed with chapters narrated by Elsa, Alice’s great-aunt.  From her perspective, the village of Silvertjärn is shown back when it was inhabited.  By the 1950s, when Elsa’s story is taking place, the town is already starting to go downhill.  The townspeople have just learned that the mine where nearly everyone is employed is going to be shutting down.  It is at this time of despair that a new person comes to town and the villagers begin to see some hope where there had been none before. Back in the present day, a variety of bad events begin to befall the film crew.  As they begin to suffer more serious accidents, they begin to wonder if the village is deserted after all, or if whatever evil happened in the village all those years ago is still present.  The story has an interesting premise and I was interested to see how the mystery would eventually be solved.  The only quibble I had was that the main character, Alice, was a bit too whiny and self-absorbed for most of the story.  Still, it was a very suspenseful and ultimately satisfying story.  It would make a fantastic film!

I received a copy of The Lost Village from NetGalley in exchange for this review