Rye Adler is dead. When Julian Ladd sees the obituary and the implication of suicide, long-buried memories and emotions rise from their murky depths.

Twenty years ago, they had been roommates at an exclusive photography workshop where Rye’s work outshone all the rest. He was everything Julian wasn’t, and to add salt to the wound, he got the girl. Magda was beautiful, sensuous and nearly as gifted as Rye. Julian’s envy clawed at his insides, forming a wound that would fester for years. When the workshop ends, Rye marries another girl and accepts a job in Africa. Julian runs into the heartbroken Magda a short time later, and their encounter quickly becomes intimate. When she informs him that she’s pregnant, they marry and have a child --- a boy whose eyes are the same color as Rye’s.

"Words flow like a river through a Monet painting. Thoughts, emotions, self-realizations, regrets and observations saturate each page. It is as lyrical as it is moving, and as messy as it is redemptive."

And so begins a twisted journey to THE VANISHING POINT, where a renowned photographer is proclaimed dead, though his body has not been recovered, an addicted son is missing, and five complex characters question the choices, motives and entanglements that led them to the here and now.

Throughout Elizabeth Brundage’s novel, photography serves as a central theme, weaving seamlessly throughout each character’s unfolding dramas and casting hues of darkness and light onto failures, successes and perspectives. And like a photo, the written words take us only so far, and it is up to us to fill in the gaps between what is seen and unseen. The book provides plenty of opportunity for this as we come to know how each character impacted the other and ponder what a fragile soul might be led to do once he or she begins the journey down a dark path.

THE VANISHING POINT is truly a work of literary fiction in every aspect of the genre. Words flow like a river through a Monet painting. Thoughts, emotions, self-realizations, regrets and observations saturate each page. It is as lyrical as it is moving, and as messy as it is redemptive. The pace is slow and sometimes nearly motionless, so for those who like to savor every word and get deep into the ruminations and backstory of each character, this is the book for you. It picks up a bit toward the end, which is as complex and layered as the rest of the story, but is nonetheless satisfying.