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Synopsis:

When a father goes missing, his family’s desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another–both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

“We didn’t call the police right away.” Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything–which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, race, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.

Review:

Happiness Falls is the highly anticipated follow-up to Angie Kim’s debut novel Miracle Creek. In Happiness Falls, we are introduced to a family, the Parksons, father Adam, mother Hannah, the twenty year old twins, Mia and John, and the youngest, Eugene, who has nonverbal autism and Angelman syndrome, a genetic disorder that presents as constant smiling, laughing, and signs of happiness, regardless of the situation. When Adam disappears on a walk by the river with Eugene, the investigation takes several turns, revels secret lives, and events bring the family closer together.

There are a some elements that Angie Kim chooses when telling this story that makes this novel much better than it could have been. First, she has Mia be the narrator. She is twenty year old, home from college due to Covid shutdown after secretly changing her major and breaking up with her secret boyfriend. Mia is snarky, unreliable, and too smart for her own good. Seeing the story through her eyes also brings an element of slanted reality, one where she finds intelligence to be a tool for power and most of those around her aren’t nearly as powerful as her. Even though Mia could be seen as a bit of a brat, she is an unpredictable narrator, and this makes the story feel a little more unnerving and dangerous.

Second, Angie Kim uses science and philosophy as the glue to hold the mystery of Adam Parkson’s disappearance together. With Mia being the narrator, she also has someone who is interested in the things that her father was working on when he disappeared, who understood that this research could also be a piece of the puzzle. I love the incorporation of hard science in a narrative that does not typically lend to this type of content. It reminds me a little of when the sitcom The Big Bang Theory came out in 2007. I encouraged my friends to watch it simply because it was different than most of the typical dumb dad sitcoms and reality shows that were popular at the time. The Big Bang Theory has some light science in the middle of a comedy, which made it a little smarter than what we were watching at that time (the two most popular shows when TBBT came out were American Idol and Dancing With the Stars). Happiness Falls reminds me of this, but it leans a little heavier on the science than TBBT. The mystery unfolding is weaved through all of the scientific work that is being done by Adam Parkson, and this is a clever aspect to the storytelling. 

The third thing that really makes Happiness Falls stellar is the true reason for the novel. Eugene is the only witness to his father’s disappearance, and he is nonverbal. In society, we see people who are nonverbal as people with lesser intelligence. Angie Kim uses her experience as someone who came to the United States from Korea and learned English in a way that she could understand it better than she could speak it. This causes everyone around her to talk to her as if she was less intelligence, simply because she could not speak her thoughts. When she learned that this happens in many nonverbal people, she decided that this is the basis for Eugene, and Happiness Falls as a story is a true advocate to help eliminate the disparity between how we treat verbal and nonverbal people.

I listened to the audiobook of Happiness Falls, and more times than not when I am listening to an audiobook, I’m just listening to the story and am not really engaged. Happiness Falls is one of those rare occasions where the structure, narration, and story pulled me in completely, and I listened to it for hours at a time. There are a few weird threads in Mia’s narrative that do not get resolved, but as a whole, this is one of the best novels that I have listened to. I am still thinking about it’s impact every day.