What Is Gone is a story of violence and nostalgia, the inextricable connections between identity and place, narrated by a woman who grew up in the comforting cultural geography of Lincoln, Nebraska, a town that made her feel so safe she became almost incapable of comprehending danger. Even after her own encounter with violence--a brutal rape in nearby Omaha in 1985--she returns to her hometown convinced that it was the city she remembered, department...