Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Black Rose Writing, and author David B. Seaburn for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

I was surprised how quickly and thoroughly Until It Was Gone drew me in. Perhaps being the same age as the main protagonist, Laney, I could relate to the life she’d lived and arriving at this point in time with misgivings.

Franklin and Laney Stafford have been married for forty years. The night they are out celebrating at their favorite restaurant, Laney ends their celebration by telling Franklin she’s leaving him. He’s stunned and asks if she ever loved him. She answers, “Yes, until it was gone.” Laney takes an Uber home, packs a couple of bags, and disappears in her lavender Mercedes.

Franklin returns to the empty house and is at a loss. Laney has done this before but always returned in a few days. Something feels different this time. He struggles to cope with her leaving him and then collapses in the throes of COVID-19. His sister, Gretchen, moves in. Gretchen lost her husband a few years earlier in a mass shooting, and the sentencing of the killer is coming up. She tries to nurse Franklin through the loss of Laney as well as long COVID.

Laney, meanwhile, has headed to Oklahoma to try and forge a relationship with their daughter, Roz, who left home at 16, and granddaughter Maggie, who they have never met. Roz became pregnant after leaving home and raised Maggie as a single mother. They live in a desolate area without much chance of escaping. Roz manages a convenience store, while Maggie cleans rooms at a small motel. It’s a dead-end for both of them. That might not matter to Roz, who is comforted by the isolated atmosphere, but Maggie is stagnating. Laney arrives to a fristy reception from Roz, while Maggie wants to get to know her grandmother.

Until It Was Gone details generational trauma and how it continually affects those who experience it. Roz’s anger at her parents is justified in her mind only. She blames them for losing the first love of her life, but her perspective on that situation is still that of a 15-year-old who seemingly watched The Little Mermaid too many times. Much like that movie, when you watch that as a child, you sympathize with Ariel, but as you grow older, you realize her father was right about everything. Roz never moved into looking at her past from the perspective of an adult and parent. She holds on to her anger and resentment because she doesn’t want to admit she was wrong and her parents were right.

Laney is a product of the time she was raised in, which I could identify with. We were the tail-end of an era where a woman was judged based on who she married, how she kept a house, and how she raised her children. It was drilled in her head that if a man didn’t hit her and provided for her, he was a “good catch.” Forty years later, she’s seeing the newer generations with much more available to them in terms of life and yearns for what she missed. At the same time, she has valid complaints about her husband. Franklin loves Laney more than life itself, but he doesn’t know her as a person. Their love is superficial.

Until It Was Gone shows a family at a crossroads, where Laney is making what is likely a last-chance grasp to get to know her daughter and granddaughter. In the throes of depression over Laney leaving and COVID, Franklin confronts the ghosts of his past. Gretchen comes to terms with her husband’s murderer. The bonds of family are strong as they all come together when it’s a matter of life and death.

I wasn’t expecting to be drawn into this as thoroughly as I was. I read Until It Was Gone in just two days, and it resonated deeply with the world as I know it. I highly recommend it.