Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

Before Sally Holt enters the eighth grade, the summer is wonderfully boring. It's jam-packed with beach outings with her elder sister Kathy and extended stays in the neighborhood pool, which they largely use as an opportunity to gawk at Billy Barnes, the man who runs the concession stand there. Billy is a rising senior and a local basketball sensation. Since he leaped from the school roof in fifth grade, he has fascinated both ladies endlessly, and their infatuation with him is one of the few things the increasingly disparate sisters have in common. By the end of the summer, Billy and Kathy have become a thing—an unbelievable turn of events that culminates in an even more unbelievable catastrophe.

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is a fifteen-year narrative told from Sally's point of view as she speaks with Kathy before to, during, and after her death. We see how a huge void is left by Kathy's departure, which only Billy—who is now strictly off-limits to Sally—can comprehend and may perhaps try to fill. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance charts years of their shared history and missed connections. It is a wry, sharply observant coming-of-age story that examines how the people we love the most continue to shape our lives long after they pass away, as well as a breathtaking love story between two broken people who are strangely, inconveniently drawn to each other.