Wolf in White Van: A Novel

After a self-inflicted injury, Sean Phillips is left defaced and detached from reality. Secluded in his Southern California apartment, he distracts himself from the emotional and physical pain of his condition by designing fictional landscapes for strangers to traverse via mail: a game called Trace Italian. But, when high school students Lance and Carrie begin confusing this imagined terrain with actuality, Sean is forced to revisit the vital misunderstandings and unwelcome choices of his own past.

Sean’s feral seeking gives way to a fantastical hunger for refuge. Full of raw, unanswered calls for help, he must reconstruct the definition of living, of coping, and continue waiting for something to happen. With every turn of the page, I too was transported into this quest for meaning as I navigated the void of suffering with outstretched hands in the dark, fear nestling between the beats of my racing heart.

I was just as gripped by my own primal instincts, just as obsessed with endings, just as uncertain of survival.