Half the fun of Farmington River is getting to know the quirks of the characters who inhabit Avon Old Farms and Ethel Walker schools. There's the cranky headmaster whose favorite pastime is bedding his students' mothers; the Cuban soccer coach who sees all and speaks his mind; the wisecracking boys at Avon; the best friends at Walker's who finish each other's sentences and know more than they wish they did; Sam Field, the young teacher, coach and amateur sleuth trying to stay professional despite the overtures of an alluring Walker's student; the closeted Avon boy who wants to drop sports in favor of theater, against the will of the headmaster and his own mother; and the retired detective, Jacqueline Spellmeyer, whose painstaking work puts local police to shame.

A Walker's girl, Mallory Harding, has gone missing, but there's no body, no motive, no trail of evidence. A potential suspect is her boyfriend, an Avon day student and baseball prospect who internalizes the insecurities of his working-class parents--but no one can pin anything on him.

Farmington River also features ruminations on rivers, rain, and empty parking lots; mystical encounters with a "missing" poster; literate but melancholy journal entries by an unnamed author; and a tender love scene in a car in the pouring rain between Sam and his ex-girlfriend, who listens to his story of his encounters with Mallory's poster and offers a reason her "spirit" singled him out for help.