A dying mother's wish compels a man to return to his Kansas hometown and help solve a mystery about missing teens, only to uncover their own secret past.

The body of a teenage boy is discovered in a Kansas field. The murder haunts Donna—a recent widow battling cancer—calling forth troubling details from long-suppressed memories of her past. Hoping to discover more about "disappeared" people, she turns to her son, Scott, who is fighting demons of his own. Addicted to methamphetamines and sleeping pills, Scott is barely holding on—though the chance to help his mother in her strange and desperate search holds out a slim promise of some small salvation.

But what he finds is a boy named Otis handcuffed in a secret basement room, and the questions that arise seem too disturbing even to contemplate. With his mother's health rapidly deteriorating, Scott must surrender to his own obsession, and unravel Otis's unsettling connections to other missing teens . . . and, ultimately, to himself.

"It's not hyperbole to suggest that We Disappear is the eeriest Kansas-set story since Truman Capote's In Cold Blood ." — Chicago Sun-Times

" We Disappear is really about identity and personality, about our constant struggle to know who we are, and about how easy it can be to lose our grip on reality when we try to alter our memories." — San Francisco Chronicle

"Strange and luminous, this fascinating thriller tackles questions of identity, illness, and trauma. . . . Taut and beautifully clear, the writing at times recalls that of Paul Auster." — Publishers Weekly

Scott Heim