We get to know Kim Larsen, a popular teenager in the small town of Kingsville, Ohio, in just a few pages at the beginning of Stewart O'Nan's novel Songs for the Missing.

On page 14, she vanishes.

The book isn't intended as a mystery, though it begins as one; it's about what Kim's disappearance does to those closest to her. The chapters trace the long weeks and, eventually, years after the terrible event from the shifting perspectives of her parents, her little sister, her best friend and her boyfriend.

O'Nan shapes this melancholy material into a narrative that's easy to keep reading. His generosity toward his characters even makes it, in a strange way, enjoyable. These are people with "typical American" practically stamped on their foreheads, and it takes considerable skill to make them hold your attention.

Kim disappears on July 14, 2005. By then her father, Ed, a hard-working Realtor, is already aware that the economic environment is going sour. The family crisis pushes the Larsens further into a financial hole: Coordinating a search means time off and all kinds of expenses, though O'Nan -- kindly, perhaps -- only touches on this part of their catastrophe.

Fran Larsen, an efficient hospital administrator and a borderline alcoholic, is energized by the disappearance. She pulls herself together, stops drinking and develops a politician's savvy for playing the media, trolling for any and all the help she can get in finding her daughter.

Kim's awkward and withdrawn adolescent sister, Lindsay -- the book's most complexly developed character -- has to cope with distraught parents who make things worse by trying to spare her, and with her sudden, unwanted celebrity as the missing girl's sibling. Kim's boyfriend, J.P., and her best friend, Nina, feel confused and disloyal as they find themselves gradually letting go of her, and even guiltier as their thoughts begin turning to each other.

O'Nan doesn't introduce a single character who isn't believable. He has researched the handling of missing-persons cases, paid careful attention to the psychology of the bereaved and diligently explored northeastern Ohio. His deft, musical prose is a pleasure to read. Yet he seems to be curtailing his ambition, embracing the mundane as though reaching for the extraordinary would be cheating. His efforts to avoid sensationalism appear to have hamstrung him.

O'Nan has already shown, in his short and chilling 1999 novel, A Prayer for the Dying, that he's equal to the pity and terror of the darkest themes. His subject matter here is pitch-black, yet Songs for the Missing holds no terror, just pity. The book is oddly comforting, even cozy, and it shouldn't be. It needs to take us to -- or at least through -- a place we don't want to go.