The Leaving

Tara Altebrando’s 2016 young adult novel The Leaving is a blended genre work that includes mystery, thriller, and romance elements. Three characters, Lucas, Scarlett, and Avery, reveal the story of the abduction of six children in their hometown of Fort Myers, Florida, and what happens when five of them are suddenly and inexplicably returned 11 years later with no memory of their time away. Highlighting themes of Trust and Betrayal in Relationships, The Search for Truth in a Web of Lies, and The Fragility and Reliability of Memory, The Leaving explores how memory impacts identity and personal strength after trauma.

This guide refers to the 2016 edition by Bloomsbury Children’s Books.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of kidnapping, trauma, death, child death, mental illness, addiction, and substance use.

Plot Summary

The Leaving is told from a third-person limited omniscient point of view. The chapters rotate between three characters: Avery, Lucas, and Scarlett. Lucas and Scarlett’s chapters include stylized elements that emphasize their states of mind. In chapters from Lucas’s perspective, his memories are represented by indented black boxes with fragmented images in white capitalized type. Scarlett’s ideas and reactions are often represented by stylized text that conveys emotional meaning (like wavering letters when she is uncertain).

A white van drops off five teenagers, including a girl named Scarlett, near a playground in Fort Myers, Florida. None can recall their identities or where they were. They find maps in their pockets and surmise they are directions to their homes. They part ways after planning to meet the next evening.

Scarlett’s mother is stunned to see her. Scarlett learns that 11 years ago, she and five other children went missing on their third day of kindergarten in an abduction referred to as “The Leaving,” which followed a tragic shooting at the school months before. Scarlett, Adam, Kristen, Sarah, and Lucas are back while Max, the sixth child, is still missing. Scarlett recalls only a hot air balloon from the missing years. She meets with a cognitive scientist, Dr. Sashor, without result, but an MRI finds an oval object in her intestines.

Lucas’s father is so shocked to see him that he slips from the ledge of Opus 6, a rock memorial he built to honor the missing children, and dies. Lucas’s brother Ryan and his girlfriend Miranda try to get used to Lucas’s return; Ryan shows Lucas their father’s gathered notes and clippings on The Leaving stored in an old RV on their property. Lucas discusses a carousel, his one memory, with Dr. Sashor.

Avery waits with her parents for Max, her older brother and one of the missing, to return, but he does not. She convinces her father to offer a reward for information; her father funds a tipline for callers. In the RV, Avery and Lucas discover a paperback, The Leaving by Daniel Orlean, about a futuristic society in which small children are sent away to forget their sad childhoods.

Lucas and Scarlett visit Orlean in nearby Tarpon Springs. Orlean has Alzheimer’s, however, and cannot recall the novel. The object in Scarlett’s gut turns out to be a stretched penny from Anchor Beach, near Tarpon Springs, where manatees enjoy warm currents created by the nearby power plant. When Lucas and Scarlett visit, a security guard recognizes them; he recalls Scarlett always wore a quilted coat and that they carved their initials into the pier. Lucas and Scarlett kiss, acknowledging they semi-recall their former romance. Back home, Lucas fills Ryan in, annoyed that Miranda is always there.

Chambers, the detective on the case, asks Avery’s parents if Max was at the school’s open house on the day of the shooting; he was. Lucas wants to know why he asked this, as he too was present, but Chambers will not reveal any theory. However, the investigation moves forward when the tipline gets a report of a body in the Everglades.

After investigating, Chambers believes the body is kidnapper John Norton. Scarlett’s coat and photos of the five children growing up are in Norton’s remote house. Police also find syringes filled with a drug that affects memory. To the returned abductees, however, the property looks staged; they recall nothing, despite seeing framed photographs of their memories, like Lucas’s carousel.

Scarlett rediscovers that she enjoys sewing. Avery is frustrated when her father shuts down the tipline; calls are still coming in, but authorities assume they are bogus. She reads The Leaving; the potential but unproven connections make her reevaluate her accomplishments, which seem petty as she grasps the loss of memories over time.

Lucas suspects his fingerprints will be on the gun used to kill Norton and senses that time is running out to find the real perpetrator. Ryan’s girlfriend Miranda names the family dog in photos from years before, though Ryan does not recall having told her about the dog.

Meanwhile, Sarah tries to sketch her recalled images of a house and a girl. Kristen remembers Scarlett kissing Adam, not Lucas. Kristen also recalls an owl’s image. Scarlett tells Lucas about Adam at Ryan and Lucas’s house, where she meets Miranda. Lucas and Scarlett realize their past may be too complicated for a relationship now.

Lucas’s fingerprints are found on the gun, and he is arrested for Norton’s murder. Doctor Sashor tells Lucas that witnesses indicate the five abductees saw the school shooting. Lucas realizes that the motive for the abduction may have been to make the six of them forget the shooting.

Sarah texts images of the house and girl she drew to Scarlett; Scarlett is shocked that the girl is a young Miranda and texts the image to Lucas. Miranda sees it and flees.

On the tipline recordings, Avery hears a caller say the abduction was supposed to be for hours, not years. Later, at the RV with Lucas, she watches news clips from the night of The Leaving; when the principal answers reporters’ questions, she recognizes his voice as the one on the tipline. Scarlett discovers that she once stitched a rudimentary map of Anchor Beach in the lining of her coat with smokestacks (the power plant), a pier, and an X marking a spot.

Police find a house in the location of the X. When the abductees visit, they each know which bedroom was theirs. Chambers suggests that the principal chose them as subjects to forget the shooting trauma for a well-funded group that continually wiped their memories. The experiment, he believes, was intended to have eventual military applications. From the principal’s mention on the tipline of an asthma attack, Chambers theorizes that Max died soon after the abduction. In the house, Kristen finds a journal she kept under the floorboards with the image of an owl in the grain. The journal suggests that the children tried to place clues to help them remember in the face of repeated memory erasure.

Police find Max’s remains at a house owned formerly by the principal. Miranda calls Lucas to say they will never find her father, the man responsible. She was observing Lucas’s reintroduction to conclude the experiment, which lengthened into an 11-year attempt to raise them without trauma. Lucas recognizes the man’s face in the carousel photo. Chambers discovers that the man is Louis Immerso. Lucas is content to know the perpetrator’s name, though Immerso cannot be found. The abductees gather to spread Lucas’s father’s ashes at the Opus 6 memorial.