“It will stay between us, just you and me. I can even turn off the recorder if you want. But I have to have your answer. I have to know what you want. I have to know if you want to keep him.”
“No,” Harold said. “Not for all the world. But what choice do I have?”
I watched the first few episodes of the ABC TV show Resurrection a few years back starring Red Foreman and the other Eric Foreman so the plot of The Returned was familiar.
All over the world the dying are coming back to life; they haven’t aged and they appear to be the same as they were before their death besides a few quirks like being constantly hungry and rarely sleeping. Lucille and Harold Hargrave live in the small town of Arcadia; their son, Jacob, died on his eighth birthday in 1966 and Returns fifty-eight years later. International Bureau of the Returned Agent Bellamy is sent to Arcadia to reconnect Jacob, like many other Returned, with his family and Bellamy takes a liking to the Hargrave family.
The town of Arcadia, like the rest of America, struggles to accept what the Returned really are (angels, demons or something in between) and the government begins to lock them up. Arcadia converts a school into a containment camp. Harold goes with Jacob to the school so he can keep an eye on him. He also meets, and begins to look after, an older Returned woman suffering from dementia. In the meantime, Lucille stays on the outside and tries to be an advocate for other Returned families while a”True Living” movement begins to gain steam.
I read like two thirds of this book and then put it down for about two weeks which threw off the pacing. I’m fairly certain it’s a good book, because the premise is really interesting, but I just didn’t pay enough attention to really form an opinion. It’s been a long week and Catch-22 took a lot out of me.