First published 2025
The narrator has ditched their corporate job, rejected their old name, and suffered a brutal fight with their ex-boyfriend that may have damaged their brain. They're drinking heavily when their mother calls with news: their conspiracy-obsessed, Trump-supporting father has vanished. The narrator steals a car and drives from Chicago toward rural Arkansas to find him. Their traveling companion is a self-described "garbage goth" who carries her own trauma and someone pursuing her. As they cross state lines, the narrator confronts memories of childhood and a recent devastating loss they've been avoiding. The journey forces them to examine their rage about class, money, and gender in a system that seems designed to crush people like them. This road trip becomes a reckoning with family, identity, and the economic forces that shape American lives.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, social-issues, family-drama, road-trip
Vibes: dark, emotionally-intense, introspective, raw, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, reckoning-with-past, road-trip, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Chicago, Arkansas, rural America
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
224 pages · Paperback · Flatiron Books
Content warnings: abuse, addiction, alcohol-abuse, mental-illness