First published 2025
Mara works the late shift at a roadside diner, collecting discarded phone records from abandoned booths. When she discovers a sequence of disconnected calls from her childhood neighborhood, she becomes fixated on reconstructing the conversations—each fragment a potential key to understanding a family secret she can barely remember. As Mara begins tracking down the original callers, she realizes someone doesn't want these connections restored. Strange warnings appear: crossed-out phone numbers, cryptic messages left at her workplace. Her investigation threatens to expose a decades-old network of small-town silences, with consequences that could unravel her own fragile sense of identity. The more Mara pieces together, the more dangerous her pursuit becomes. Each recovered conversation brings her closer to a revelation that connects her own fractured memories with a larger, more complicated story of displacement and concealed histories.
Genres: suspense, mystery, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Roadside Diner
Period: Late Shift
158 pages · Paperback · Fitzcarraldo Editions