Local Woman Missing

Throughout the novel, Kubica highlights multiple instances of the struggle to escape from or avoid captivity and gain freedom.

The characters’ physical captivity extends to mental and emotional captivity, even after the characters are free. Carly and Delilah’s experiences reveal that the way that their identities have become fluid, lost, and seemingly interchangeable. For them, freedom consists of reclaiming a sense of personal identity. As Carly puts it: “Now that I got a little taste of freedom, I don’t want to die” (37). Both Carly and Delilah struggle to let go of the identities foisted upon them in captivity, with Carly still preferring to sleep in the basement and Delilah holding on to a fondness for Bea’s company.

Other characters face more subtle forms of subjugation. Kubica draws particular attention to some of the ways that women are undervalued, mistreated, or disregarded. As a doula, Meredith is particularly aware of the dilemma faced by women in labor:

Laboring women don’t want to piss anyone off. Because they need them. Which means that sometimes unnecessary things are done to a woman’s body during labor, for the sake of convenience or efficiency. Sometimes I’m as much of a bodyguard as anything else (207).

Instead of being trapped in a physical space, women giving birth are trapped in a situation (labor) where they surrender bodily autonomy.