Finished: What Could Be Saved (Schwarz) This the intricate story of a family who is ripped apart when the eight year old son and brother is kidnapped while the family lives in Bangkok, as the father, Robert, who secretly works for the government, is assigned a project that involves subverting North Vietnamese progress by identifying native boys that may be working as spies. While the wife and children have no idea what the father does for a living, their somewhat idyllic life in Asia moves forward as the wife, Genevieve, hosts and attends the required work parties every weekend, and the children attend school and extracurricular activities. All of the American households have Thai housekeepers, cooks and drivers who do all the manual work. The book goes back and forth in time between 1972, when little Philip Preston is kidnapped to 2019 when his youngest sister, Laura, then seven and now in her fifties, receives a phone call from a woman in Thailand telling her that her brother is alive and has been living there for decades and he now needs to come home. Laura whose father dies a few years after Philip's kidnapping and whose formidable mother is now suffering from dementia, calls her older sister, Beatrice, who was twelve at the time of the kidnapping. Bea, always taking responsibility as the oldest, refuses to believe this person could be Philip so doesn't agree to go with Laura to bring him home. Laura goes on her own, and sure enough, the man she meets is definitely her brother! We flash back to their childhood and the relationships between the siblings, and between each of the children and their parents, and between the parents themselves. All of them have their flaws, but they are, in the end, just a normal family, each taking some guilt for the disappearance of Philip, even though none are to blame. (Well, I do kind of blame the inattentive mother.) The compelling story delves into each character's feelings, their motivations for taking the actions they do, and of course, into the mystery of how and why Philip disappeared, and how far and wide everyone searched for Philip before giving up. As a reader, I was sad for all the years the sisters lost with their brother, and for all the heartache the parents suffered. As Philip ends up telling Laura, though, he went through some horrific times, but came out of them living a meditative life with a group of people led by a teacher who he grew to respect and love. He truly thought his family had been contacted and refused to pay a ransom for him (a lie he was told by an evil woman), and he ended up living an alternative life....not the happy family life Laura had imagined they should have had, but still he had lived his life. A very good read that will stay with me for a bit! 

Here's a bit of a review from Sarah McCraw Crow from BookPage that put into better words what I was feeling: 

As the novel opens, 54-year-old Laura Preston is treading water. Her art plateaued years ago, and she’s in a stagnant relationship with a lawyer named Edward. She doesn’t get along with her disapproving sister, Bea, and their mother, Genevieve, is slipping away to dementia. When Laura gets a call from a stranger who says her long-lost brother, Philip, has been found, she impulsively buys a ticket to Bangkok and sets off to find him.

This sounds like a setup for a suspense novel, and What Could Be Saved does offer suspenseful moments and surprising reversals. But two other elements make this novel uniquely satisfying: the portraits of each Preston family member, and the novel’s depiction of the unintended consequences of late 20th-century Americans abroad.

In Bangkok, Laura connects with the man who might be Philip, and from there, the narrative slips back to 1972, where it rotates through the perspectives of mother Genevieve; father Robert; young Laura and Philip; and Noi, a homesick Thai servant to the Prestons. Through their stories, readers learn what brought the Preston family to Bangkok, how the Vietnam War has spilled into other countries and the truth behind Philip’s disappearance. As the story shifts back and forth in time, the present-day Laura warily tries to make sense of Philip’s new presence, unearthing further truths about her family.