Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and The Chicago Tribune
“Heartbreaking and funny, often in the same sentence―a deeply felt, finely wrought, and highly satisfying novel. Alison Espach has created a family whose every sorrow, joy, and idiosyncrasy is utterly, vibrantly real.”―New York Times bestselling author Claire Lombardo
For much of her life, Sally Holt has been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally’s questions about life, about love, and about Billy Barnes, a rising senior and local basketball star who mans the concession stand at the town pool. The girls have been fascinated by Billy ever since he jumped off the roof in elementary school, but Billy has never shown much interest in them until the summer before Sally begins eighth grade. By then, their mutual infatuation with Billy is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. Sally spends much of that summer at the pool, watching in confusion and excitement as her sister falls deeper in love with Billy―until a tragedy leaves Sally’s life forever intertwined with his.
Opening in the early nineties and charting almost two decades of shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is both a breathtaking love story about two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other and a wryly astute coming-of-age tale brimming with unexpected moments of joy.
Alison Espach is the bestselling author of The Wedding People, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a Today Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick, a Barnes and Noble Book Club Pick, and a #1 Indie Next Pick. The Wedding People spent several dozen weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and will be published in over 35 countries. She is also the author of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, a Chicago Tribune and NPR “Best Book of the Year,” as well as The Adults, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Barnes and Noble Discover Pick. Her fictional audio series In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People is an Audible Original. She has written for McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside, LitHub, Joyland and other places. She lives and teaches creative writing in Rhode Island.
Alison received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation for the Arts, Millay Arts, The Wassaic Project, the Cuttyhunk Writers Residency and the San Miguel Literary Sala.
