You may recognize Moore’s name from her newer release Long Bright River. The story follows a young girl whose world collapses when her single father’s undisclosed Alzheimer’s begins disrupting the happy pair's peaceful existence. David is a brilliant scientist, but as he comes to terms with his encroaching illness, he begins to plan for Ada's future without him. But he runs out of time, and never gets to tell his daughter the truth about his own identity—and why he isn't the person he'd always claimed to be. Years later, a visit from a long-lost friend prompts Ada to investigate her father's history, relying on everything he'd taught her about computers and coding to decrypt the clues he left for her years ago. Wonderful on audio, as narrated by Lisa Flanagan.

The New York Times Book Review calls this a "page-turner to a book that makes you want to call someone you love." People says, "This is police procedural and a thriller par excellence, one in which the city of Philadelphia itself is a character (think Boston and Mystic River). But it's also a literary tale narrated by a strong woman with a richly drawn personal life - powerful and genre-defying." From the publisher: "Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then one of them goes missing. In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit - and her sister - before it's too late."

Moore’s latest is a family saga, missing persons tale, and 1970s summer camp story rolled into one. One August morning in 1975, a camper vanishes without a trace. But not just any camper: she’s the daughter of the wealthy family who owns this camp, and fourteen years before, her older brother similarly disappeared. As the family, the campers themselves, and the neighboring blue-collar town residents gather to search for the girl, everyone suspects the two missing children must be linked, but how? The mystery is a driving force, but Moore’s story is complex and carefully layered, with a large cast of believably drawn characters who add texture and nuance. A character-driven, compulsively readable literary mystery that I've recommended for my teenage daughters, my mother's seventy-something-year-old friends, and dozens of readers in between. 

I picked up this 2012 release because I've come to love Liz Moore's work and am toying with the idea of becoming a completist. It's been on my TBR list for many years, yet the uncomfortable descriptions of one protagonist's fatness almost led me to put down the book in the opening pages. (I appreciated this interview with Moore, in which she puts words to her own discomfort at how these descriptions were written, and what she would do differently were she to write this book today.) I'm glad I stuck with it, because I was quickly swept up in the story of three lonely and struggling characters who seem to have nothing in common, but who are brought together by fate and circumstance to maybe, hopefully become a family to one another. The title of the book refers to many things: addiction, compulsive behaviors, the burdens we carry, and the near-impossible weight of the burdens placed on us by our parents. But who might help us deal with these hardships, and carry these burdens? That is the question Heft seeks to answer.