Absence

Summary

People are “popping.” Disappearing, one by one, into thin air. A global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.

Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. Harvey’s job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine—until his life is shaken by an unexpected assignment from the central office.

A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she’s been to the other side and back. But is her wild and irresistible account true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for it? Together with his no-BS partner, Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.

A resonant portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut is a vividly imagined novel of cosmic proportions, examining life in a time of exception and the stories we tell to get by.

“In this engaging, closely observed and intensely humanistic story that reads like Mulder and Scully collecting the immanent evidence of the end of the world, Andrew Dana Hudson helps us see how the real path to a better tomorrow is through rediscovery of the connection and community we have lost.”—Christopher Brown, author of Tropic of Kansas