Echoes

The author uses echoes as a motif throughout the novel to explore the multivalency of historical documentation. Echoes recur in both literal and metaphorical contexts in each section of Lost Children Archive. As the mother, her husband, and son attempt to document their trip from New York to Arizona, their consciousnesses and attention are perpetually attuned to the sounds around them. Many of the stories the father tells his children also involve sites along the drive that act as echo chambers. The children are perpetually curious about the science and mystery of these reverberating sounds, both where they originate and the powers behind them. Furthermore, the structure of the novel as a whole, its layering of voices and points of view acts as its own echo canyon, as one character's rendering of experience often echoes off the others. In much the same way, the stories the...