Celine: A Novel

Celine by Peter Heller is a lovingly written mystery.

Celine is a private investigator and artist living in Brooklyn. She is a mother and grandmother who only takes cases about missing people. Between cases she creates art with found things and dodges her boyfriend’s attempts to make her eat vegetables.

When a fellow alumna reads an article about Celine in their college magazine, she thinks she has found the women to help her find her missing father. Gabriela’s father was a photojournalist who when missing or was killed by a grizzly bear on the Montana / Wyoming border. Celine and her boyfriend, Pete, fly across the country, borrow a truck with a camper, and try to follow the man’s footsteps.

Interspersed with flashbacks to Celine’s childhood, told sometimes by her and sometimes by an adult son who has great affection for his mother, this mystery is about family, loss and hope. Heller is an adventure writer for outdoor magazines, a nonfiction and fiction author, along with being a poet. The combination leads to wonderful books in which readers sometimes pause to marvel in the beauty of the word choices while still inhaling the story. Celine is especially moving as the main character is based on his own mother. If you only ready one book this year, make it this one. If you read a lot, buy it so you can read it again later!

Heller, Peter. (2017). Celine: A Novel. NY: Knopf.