“A therapist I know—” Rachel was careful not to say my therapist; only Joshua knew she was seeing someone— “says there’s a theory that traumas leave us arrested at the age of the trauma.”

“Michelle doesn’t even remember Daddy. And that would make you forever fourteen, me sixteen. With all due respect, your therapist friend is kind of a quack.”

What do moments of catastrophe or tragedy inflict on the human psyche? Laura Lippman’s latest novel, After I’m Gone, suggests a mind emotionally and cognitively “stuck” at a historical moment of pain.

Her novel tells the story of five women left bereft and embittered by a man’s disappearance, and the story of one man struggling after the death of his wife. Felix Brewer, a charming and cavalier fellow, marries Bernadette “Bambi” Gottschalk after meeting her at a Valentine’s Day dance in 1959. Bambi cares for their three little girls while Felix runs his rather lucrative, illegal business. Facing an impending prison sentence in 1976, Felix disappears—leaving his wife mysteriously impoverished and emotionally shocked.

Bambi has no idea where her husband is, or where his money has gone. She suspects her husband’s mistress, Julie, may know where the funds are—but Julie insists that she has no idea of Felix’s (or his money’s) whereabouts. Ten years later, Julie disappears without a trace. People surmise (and Bambi fears) that she has joined Felix—but in 1986, people discover her remains in a park. What happened to Julie? Was her fate tied to Felix’s disappearance?

Fast forward to 2012: Roberto “Sandy” Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working on cold cases, begins investigating Julie’s murder. He realizes the case is inextricably linked to all five of the women Felix left behind: his wife, his mistress, and his three daughters: Linda, Rachel, and Michelle.

Sandy has his own life trauma: specifically, the loss of his wife Mary some time before. Their romance, marriage, and emotional struggles provide an additional narrative thread throughout the mystery.

Though each of Felix’s daughters have their own story, each is tied both to the fate of their father and their own psychological “age”: Michelle, the baby of the family, acts like one—and is always eager for the attention and approval of males. Rachel, the middle child, finds herself battling grief at every turn. Linda, the oldest, manages to perhaps get the best “grip” on life. But interestingly, she chooses a husband who is perhaps the most manipulable of the group. She chooses, in some senses, the antithesis of her father.

Each of these characters combat their grief in different ways, and slowly begin to emerge from their pain. However, there is only one character who seems to transcend that pain: Bambi. Her final musings, at the conclusion of the book, are quite poignant. I don’t want to give the story away, but it’s a good passage.

Perhaps all of us face “frozen moments” in life. Death, divorce, financial crisis, betrayal, etc.: moments of heartbreak arrest and stall us. We are like records stuck on a single phrase or note of music. We play it, over and over. This “frozenness” derails Sandy, Julie, Michelle, and many others in Lippman’s story.

In her Author’s Note, Lippman says the novel’s inspiration came from her husband, who suggested that she “write a novel inspired by Julius Salsbury, the head of a large gambling operation in Baltimore into the 1970s.” Salsbury was convicted of mail fraud, and disappeared—leaving behind his wife, three daughters, and a girlfriend. “I found myself fascinated by the idea of the five women left behind,” Lippman writes. “What is a wife without her husband, daughters without a father, a mistress without her lover?”

Despite elements of mystery and drama, this book’s strongest genre is tragedy—not because of the characters who suffered pain, but because of those characters who refused to move on from pain: the people who chose to plant their feet in the stream of tragedy, rooted in their moment of crisis.

Follow @gracyolmstead