Among the Missing: Stories

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A sharp and haunting collection of twelve stories about people who live far outside the American Dream, while wondering which decision, which path, or which accident brought them to this place.

“Unforgettable . . . hums with life and wry humor . . . The stories sneak resolutely up on you, like new weather that hits before you know it.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

Each story in Among the Missing radiates with sharp humor, mystery, wonder, and startling compassion as Dan Chaon imagines today’s family instinctively trying to stay together, only to find itself lost in the throes of a chaotic, modern world.

In “Safety Man,” a young widow and her children become increasingly attached to an inflatable protector-doll, as the world outside seems to grow ever more threatening; “Big Me” follows a lonely, imaginative twelve-year-old boy who believes an older (slightly creepier) version of himself has moved in next door; In “I Demand to Know Where You're Taking Me,” a man blinded by love for his imprisoned brother ignores the warnings of his distant wife and a talking parrot who both witness things he’s never seen; and “Among the Missing” explores how the death of a family, found buckled in their car at the bottom of a lake, casts a shadow on a small town and intrudes upon the narrator's relationship with his aging mother.

A writer of enormous talent and emotional depth, Chaon mines the psychological landscape of his characters to dazzling effect. Among the Missing lingers in the mind through its subtle grace and power of language.