When I read this article about three little girls who were kidnapped by their father in 2007, I was struck by the uncanny similarities to The Year of Fog, particularly regarding the girls’ eventual recovery. The girls, who were abducted from their mother, Christine Bedford, during a custody visit with their father, David Matusiewicz, were eventually found living with Matusiewicz in a Winnebago in Central America. They had even spent time sleeping on a beach in Costa Rica.

It wasn’t until March 2009 that a lead, on which authorities declined to elaborate, brought law enforcement officers to a town about 40 miles outside of the Managua, Nicaragua.
There, at the end of a 19-month search, authorities discovered the girls inside a messy Winnebago trailer, overfilled with items from their Delaware home, said a U.S. Marshal who arrived on the scene.

Christine Belford took the first flight she could to Nicaragua. Her girls were healthy, though disheveled. The eldest, Laura, now 7, told her mother about sleeping on the beach in Costa Rica. The once-plump girl had become thin. Her autistic daughter, Leigh, now 6, hadn’t received treatment. When Leigh smiled, Belford noticed her teeth had rotted.