THE STRANGER VANISHES

An innkeeper in a Spirit-filled little New York town hopes a 19th-century diary will help her find the whereabouts of a missing guest.

Juneteenth marks a year since Bella Jordan came to Lily Dale with her young son, Max. The cottage community isn’t the sort of place she thought she’d end up after the sudden death of her husband, Sam, but it turns out to be the perfect spot to heal and renew herself. While most of the community is involved in the woo-woo—think clairvoyance and natural healing—Bella’s job as the local innkeeper keeps her engaged in the community without obliging her to draw on a connection to the town’s capital-S Spirit. Not that she doesn’t feel some sort of connection to Spirit, but she’s not yet ready to open herself to it. When Max spends his first night away from home at a sleepover with mischievous neighbor Jiffy, Bella’s left alone to welcome an unanticipated visitor to the inn. Lemuel is a soft-spoken Black man whom Bella implicitly trusts when she sees his gentleness with her cats, Chance and Spidey. Even though her boyfriend, local vet Drew Bailey, has discouraged Bella from opening the place to guests when she’s alone, she’s not worried when she offers Lemuel the Seaside Room for the night. But the next day, Lemuel has vanished without a trace except for the satchel he’s left behind. Worrying overnight about Lemuel’s disappearance, Bella wonders if the old diary in his bag might have clues. As Bella reads the diary, the thoughts of a young woman in the 1800s, she begins to wonder if a link to the past may provide answers about her missing guest.

While the mystery of the moment suffices, the real treat is the slow-growing development of the characters.