A man doesn't come home from the park. The sixty hours that follow chronicle the events of the Parkson family as they painstakingly try to piece together what happened to their father/husband. Angie Kim's Happiness Falls takes the reader through the family's nightmarish investigation.
Adam Parkson had taken his fourteen-year-old son Eugene to the park for some outdoor therapy, but only Eugene came home that day. Eugene is non-speaking (NOT non-verbal which is an important distinction) because he has Autism and a condition called Angelman Syndrome. The family was told that Eugene would never be capable of reading, comprehending, or cogitating. The only witness to what happened that day in the park is not able to tell the family or police what happened.
The entire narrative is through Mia Parkson's point-of view, Eugene's twenty-year-old sister. Her fraternal twin, John, and their mother Hannah are flummoxed when they eventually learn Eugene has a lot more going on under the surface than meets the eye. Turns out Eugene's motor challenges masked not only his comprehension, but his level of intelligence. Adam had been quietly working on a method, with the help of a specialist, to help his son communicate. When police begin to suspect Eugene in his father's disappearance, Eugene's ability to communicate become critical.
The discoveries of calls and texts to and from an unknown woman along with twenty thousand dollars transferred to a new account set up by Adam complicate the investigation further. In addition, Adam had been working on a "Happiness Experiment" which causes the family and police to question the motive that could be behind his disappearance.
Angie Kim expertly describes the science behind non-speaking disorders as well as movingly writing about the ineffable (such as the connections between Mia and her siblings). Although Happiness Falls is fiction, it challenges the assumptions our society tends to make specifically about the intelligence of non-speaking individuals. In the author's notes, Kim tells of her own first-hand experience immigrating to America from Korea at age eleven and not knowing English. Others assumed that because she couldn't speak, she couldn't understand or think. The attitudes and cruelties she faced informed her writing for this incredible novel.
I love books that pull from data and statistics to give credence to the narrative. Angie Kim does that through this lovable and brilliant-minded fictional family. People tend to equate intelligence with the ability to speak. Those who face bias and misunderstanding based on their oral frequency deserve the assumption of intelligence just like anyone else. I give this riveting mystery five stars out of five.
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