Long Time Gone

Long Time Gone is the ninth novel by acclaimed author Charlie Donlea, published in 2024. Donlea’s works have been published in 25 languages across 40 countries, selling over 5 million copies worldwide. This psychological thriller centers on Sloan Hastings’s search for the truth about her missing birth parents, a murdered sheriff, and the person trying to keep everything hidden. Exploring themes of The Impact of Buried Truth on Identity, The Problematic Ethics of the Profit-Driven Media, and The Limits of Small-Town Influence and Power, the novel follows Sloan as she works to uncover the hidden details of the crimes that led to her adoption. Long Time Gone was an Amazon Best of the Month Mystery & Thriller Editor’s Pick, the recipient of a starred Kirkus Review, and the audiobook won the AudioFile Earphones Award for Best Audiobook.

This guide is based on the Nook e-book edition of the text, published by Kensington Publishing in 2024.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of mental illness, child abuse, substance use, rape, addiction, death, death by suicide, and graphic violence.

Plot Summary

Sloan Hastings starts her fellowship at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Raleigh, North Carolina, the final step in her journey to becoming a medical examiner. The two-year fellowship will consist of a research year, after which she will deliver a dissertation, and a practical year spent performing autopsies. Dr. Livia Cutty, Sloan’s mentor, assigns her forensic genealogy as the topic for her research year, which leads Sloan to reach out to James Clayton, a genealogist. James suggests that Sloan submit her own DNA for an ancestry profile online. Sloan is shocked when the results reveal that Sloan is actually Charlotte Margolis, a baby who was kidnapped from Nevada 30 years ago.

On July 4, 1995, Preston and Annabelle Margolis and their baby, Charlotte, went missing from their home in Cedar Creek, Nevada. At the time, the media made the family’s disappearance into a national case, but after 30 years, all three family members are presumed dead. Upon confirming her genetic identity as Charlotte Margolis, Sloan decides she needs to speak to her parents.

Sloan has always known she was adopted, but when she confronts her parents, Todd and Dolly Hastings, with this new information, they say they adopted her from a woman named Wendy Downing and a lawyer, Guy Menendez. Sloan reaches out to the police, who involve the FBI. After investigating Todd and Dolly, the FBI concludes that they did not do anything wrong and shift their focus to finding Wendy and Guy.

Meanwhile, Harrison County Sheriff Eric Stamos, the third in a family line of Nevada sheriffs, arrives at Sloan’s door. Sloan doesn’t know him, and before he can introduce himself, she pepper-sprays him, accidentally spraying herself as well. After they recover, Eric explains why he is there: He has learned about Sloan’s connection to the Margolis disappearance and wants her help with the investigation.

The Margolis family is massively powerful in Cedar Creek, Nevada, with near total control over the town. Preston was a member of this family and worked at the family’s law firm, Margolis & Margolis. He married Annabelle, and they had a daughter, Charlotte.

Before they disappeared, Eric’s father, Sandy Stamos, was investigating a hit-and-run accident that killed Baker Jauncey, another lawyer at Margolis & Margolis. It appeared that Baker was killed by Annabelle’s car, so many people think Annabelle and Preston left Cedar Creek voluntarily to avoid prosecution. However, Eric reveals that Sandy was later found drowned in his car with heroin in his blood. Although his death was officially determined to be an accidental overdose, Eric believes that Sandy discovered the truth about who killed Baker, Preston, and Annabelle, and he was killed to cover it up.

Eric asks Sloan to travel to Cedar Creek, ingratiate herself with the Margolis family, and discover who killed Baker, Sandy, Preston, and Annabelle. Sloan agrees, secures leave from her fellowship, and travels to Cedar Creek to meet Nora Margolis, Preston’s brother Ellis’s wife.

Sloan rents a house in Cedar Creek and meets Nora, a professional photographer, who immediately befriends Sloan. Nora was close friends with Annabelle, and they shared a passion for photography. Nora explains that Preston and Annabelle were a happy couple, and they loved Charlotte. When Preston met Annabelle, he was engaged to another woman, Stella Connelly, whom Sloan adds to a list of possible suspects.

Sloan goes to Eric’s home, where they investigate the files Eric has on the hit-and-run and other disappearance cases from 1995. She then visits Reid and Tilly, Preston’s parents, and meets the rest of the Margolis family, including Ellis. Sloan likes the Margolis family, though she notes Reid’s controlling nature.

While looking at the file from the disappearance, Sloan and Eric discover blood in a photo of Preston and Annabelle’s kitchen, along with a note that the blood belongs to Annabelle. They decide to send Baker and Sandy’s autopsy reports to Sloan’s mentor, Livia. After looking into it, Livia reveals that Baker was killed by a baseball bat, not a car, and Sandy was murdered via heroin injections. Sloan and Eric conclude that the Margolis family paid the original coroner to misinterpret the autopsies, but they are not sure why.

An FBI assistant on the case, Zoe Simpson, gets a hold of a preliminary report on Sloan and the Margolis disappearance. She forwards it to Ryder Hillier, the host of Unsolved, a true crime podcast that she is a fan of. Ryder can tell that the story could be big, so she harasses Sloan’s birth parents and coworkers until she discovers that Sloan is in Cedar Creek. Ryder asks her listeners for help finding Sloan, which catches the attention of Margot Gray.

Margot goes to Cedar Creek, finds Sloan’s rental home, and confesses to being Wendy Downing. She tells Sloan that a lawyer named Guy Menendez offered her money to facilitate Sloan’s adoption under a false name. Sloan goes to get Eric. While she is gone, Margot gets nervous and calls Guy for help in deciding what to do. He comes to Margot’s room and kills her.

Ryder goes to Cedar Creek and checks into the hotel. Down the hallway, she sees a man wheeling a suitcase out of Margot’s room. When Sloan and Eric get to Margot’s room, it is empty.

After Ryder’s story about Sloan reaches the national media, news reporters swarm Raleigh and Cedar Creek, trying to get the first interview with Sloan. Sloan and Eric decide she should stay at Eric’s cabin to avoid the media. Sloan goes to her home first, however, and gets trapped inside by reporters. Nora comes to help Sloan, and she has the Margolis family handyman, Lester Strange, block the reporters from following them.

They go to Nora’s photography studio and call Ellis. He arranges for a helicopter to bring them to Bend, Oregon, where the Margolis family owns a vineyard, Margolis Manor. Nora and Sloan bring a box of Annabelle’s possessions with them, including Annabelle’s camera, with 20 photos yet to be developed. The Margolis family debates about how to handle the media, and they decide to arrange interviews that they can control, to avoid having their words twisted by reporters.

Marvin Mann, a private investigator, sees Sloan on the news and decides to intervene. In 1995, Marvin worked for Baker, who discovered fraud within Margolis & Margolis. Marvin brought the information to Sandy after Baker’s death, and Sandy discovered who was committing fraud. After Sandy’s death, Marvin left the documents proving the fraud in a safe deposit box.

Marvin reaches out to Eric. They retrieve the files, in which Sandy identifies Guy Menendez as the embezzler and reveals his true identity. Eric and Marvin race to Bend, Oregon, calling local police on the way to alert them of possible danger at Margolis Manor.

When Sloan and Nora develop Annabelle’s old film, they find pictures of Tilly and Annabelle having a fight that culminates with Tilly stabbing Annabelle. The last pictures show Ellis killing Preston.

In 1995, Sandy told Preston that Ellis was committing fraud and had killed Baker to hide it. Ellis embezzled funds to pay for his opioid and gambling addictions. Preston resolved to leave Cedar Creek with Annabelle, but Tilly and Ellis would not let them leave. They killed Preston and Annabelle, and Ellis, disguised as Guy, arranged Charlotte’s adoption through Margot. When Sandy discovered the truth, Ellis killed him, too.

Now, Ellis knows Nora and Sloan are close to discovering the truth, so he kills Tilly and Reid. Then he tries to kill Nora and Sloan, planning to blame all the murders on Lester.

With Lester’s help, Sloan and Nora narrowly escape Ellis; in the process, Lester kills Ellis with a tractor. The police discover Preston and Annabelle’s bodies buried in the grounds of Margolis Manor. Sloan returns to work at the OCME in Raleigh. On the recommendation of her mentor, Livia, Sloan does an interview with journalist Avery Mason, whom Livia trusts. Without Sloan’s story, Ryder is left to focus only on Margot Gray, and her podcast suffers as a result.

After a year, Sloan delivers her dissertation on the disappearance of Preston, Annabelle, and Charlotte Margolis. The FBI offers her a job as a medical examiner. Nora gives Sloan Annabelle’s camera, and Eric visits Sloan so that they can go on their first date.