Long Time Gone

“In 2017, with the Golden State Killer case ice cold, a clever investigator decided to submit the killer’s DNA—taken from one of the rape kits—to a genealogy website and create a ‘fake’ genetic profile. Fake in the sense that the DNA did not belong to the detective creating the profile. From there, the investigator attempted to match that DNA profile to other online users who were innocently looking to build family trees and delve into their heritage. Any match that came back would obviously be from a relative of the killer.”

This passage presents the real-life application of forensic genealogy, which lends credibility to Donlea’s premise in the novel, as well as offering practical information on how it works. James goes on to highlight how this practice is not necessarily legal, which is highlighted in his use of the word “innocently”: The other family members were unknowingly implicating the killer while searching for relatives. This establishes the ambiguous morality of such investigations, complicating the novel’s own upcoming mystery and investigation.

“Sloan swallowed hard. Preston and Annabelle. She was entering a portal to her past she had never intended to explore and couldn’t fully comprehend the emotions that came with discovering her birth parents’ names. She blinked several times to corral the tears that had welled in her eyes.”

As Sloan mentions, she never thought about her biological family before this event, but she now has to deal with their disappearance. The introduction of her parents’ names, Preston and Annabelle, adds a personal element to this mystery, forcing Sloan to make a connection to a past she never truly experienced. Her visceral reaction of swallowing and blinking illustrates the deep and instant connection she feels.

“We were still on the list with the agency, but it had been such a long and laborious process with lots of leads that ended up in disappointment, that we started to look for other options. We’d heard of other couples finding birth parents on their own and working directly with them instead of going through an agency. Many of those stories had happy endings, and the process of private adoption was much faster when the middleman was removed.”

Though Todd and Dolly did not do anything wrong, this passage shows how they took a chance on private adoption because they were frustrated with going through the normal adoption channels. The promise of “happy endings” was too tempting to deny, and this passage implies that Todd and Dolly may not have looked too hard into Wendy and Guy before adopting Sloan.