Description
The Disappeared traces a pair of casualties who emerge from the ashes of separate acts of political violence: a woman whose husband is missing in a terrorist attack, and a man who believes his sister was an unidentified victim of the '93 World Trade Center bombing. As the survivors face their own private terrors under the demanding watch of the public eye, each moves forward while working to uncover mysteries that may never be solved. Addressing conspiracies, cataclysm, and the fragile yet resilient nature of the human psyche, Braver excavates the post-trauma experience with a nuanced precision, where hope, understanding, and determination are the building blocks for making sense of what otherwise seems senseless.
Reviews
"Adam Braver's vivid characters move through a haunted landscapethe world forever changed by terrorthat has become all too familiar to many of us. This compelling and elegantly written novel charts the intersections of individual and collective grief, unfolding in unexpected ways. It is both profoundly personal and smartly political, a memorable page turner with urgent, resonant themes."
— Alix Ohlin, author of Signs and Wonders
"Braver's novel is rich and humane, a tightly controlled, beautifully orchestrated portrait of contemporary terrors and the feedback loops of fear and paranoia they create that mesmerize us and, tragically, sometimes drive us mad. There are those that disappear in the violence, and those that disappear searching for them in their wakes, trying to make sense of insanity." — Paul Harding, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Author Bio
Adam Braver is the author of Mr. Lincoln's Wars, Divine Sarah, Crows Over the Wheatfield, November 22, 1963, Misfit, The Disappeared, and Rejoice the Head of Paul McCartney. His books have been selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers program, Border's Original Voices series, the IndieNext list, and twice for the Book Sense list; as well as having been translated into Italian, Japanese, Turkish, and French. His work has appeared in journals such as Daedalus, Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Water-Stone Review, Harvard Review, Tin House, West Branch,The Normal School, and Post Road. Braver also edits the Broken Silence Series for the University of New Orleans Press, a book series that tells the firsthand accounts of political dissidents. In addition to being the Associate Director and a faculty member at the NY State Summer Writers Institute, he serves as the Library Program Director at Roger Williams University, where he is also on faculty. He lives in Rhode Island.
