The Disappeared

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.


"Adam Braver’s vivid characters move through a haunted landscape―the world forever changed by terror―that 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 Wonder


"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