by Angie Kim
First published 2023
Mia is a twenty-year-old Korean-American college student who has explanations for everything. When her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from their afternoon walk in a Virginia park, she assumes they stopped somewhere or lost their phone. Then Eugene bursts through the front door covered in blood and alone. Eugene has Angelman syndrome and cannot speak, making him the only witness to whatever happened to their father. As hours pass without contact, Mia and her family realize they must report him missing. The search becomes both a race against time and an excavation of family secrets. Mia discovers that understanding her father's disappearance requires confronting truths about language, communication, and the gaps between what families think they know about each other. The investigation forces each family member to examine their assumptions about love and connection.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Virginia
Period: 21st-century
387 pages · Hardcover · Hogarth
Content warnings: mental-illness