50 pages • 1 hour read
Before She Disappeared
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Symbols & Motifs
Racial Tension
The racial tension motif is a part of the theme of Invisibility and Marginalization of Women of Color. Frankie experiences racial tension as a stranger and a white woman in a majority Black community. Her anxiety and alienation offer a perspective on the experience of being a racial minority. For example, Stoney is disinclined to hire her solely because she is white, and she attracts attention on the street and in the bar. As an outsider, she attracts hostility and is an easy target for anger and resentment. The racial dynamics of being white in a majority Black community and being Black in a majority white society are not the same due to Frankie’s privileges as a white woman, but they still produce a racial tension that informs the characters’ experiences as they reckon with societal inequality through their personal connections.
Missing and Lost Children
The missing girls motif goes back to Frankie’s adolescence when several girls her age disappeared, and the murder went 10 years before being caught. In the story, Lani Whitehorse was both a mother and a daughter, and her death impacted her own daughter. She and Angelique are the missing children who are the focus of Frankie’s quest.
The story calls attention to the often inadequate handling of cases involving children from marginalized communities. Lisa Gardner illustrates how societal prejudices intersect with investigations when dealing with such disappearances.
Addiction and Obsession
Frankie’s alcohol addiction is the impetus for everything in Frankie’s life and a motif in the novel. Her need for help from Paul brought him into contact with the robber who shot him. Frankie blames her personal weakness for his death. Frankie’s pursuit of missing persons is a coping mechanism and an obsession. Like many recovering addicts, she has substituted one addictive behavior for another.
Her vocation gives Frankie a sense of purpose and direction and a source of need-gratification. Frankie frequently feels an urge to drink but each time, she is able either to find an AA meeting or to turn herself in a more productive direction. Frankie’s addictions are weaknesses she has redirected into strengths. Her obsession with finding missing persons has given her a sense of purpose and direction while her history of addiction and youthful mistakes gives her insight into the victims.
In particular, Frankie’s dream of finding Lani Whitehorse and being seized and drowned by her represents the relationship between alcohol addiction and her pursuit of lost and forgotten people. She has been able to control her alcohol addiction, but now her obsession with finding the lost is gripping and drowning her.
Urban Landscape
In the hard-boiled mystery story, the urban environment is a stand-in for the wilderness of more traditional adventure or quest stories. The urban landscape is both a setting and a symbol for the detective mystery’s social commentary. Frankie is an alien to the city. She has spent most of her life in the country, so places like the reservation where she found Lani Whitehorse are familiar, and she knows how to navigate. For her, the city is an unfamiliar wilderness. She has difficulty finding her way around, struggling to read maps. Cast adrift in what is to her a confusing and trackless wilderness, she is forced to recreate herself, coming out of her ordeal with a new sense of hope and of herself as less broken than she once believed.
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