One August afternoon, two sisters-Sophia, eight, and Alyona, eleven-go missing from a beach on the far-flung Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia. is a testament to the novel's power.” - The New York Times Book Review Phillips's deep examination of loss and longing.

A propulsive, emotionally engaging debut novel about the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

I think about this book and the places it brings to life almost everyday. Phillips guides you through her words to a place across the Earth you can smell the muddy ice in the streets, the cigarette smoke, and the salt in the air. She’s spot on with that analogy, you spiral through this story with the narrators you meet, (each chapter has a new narrator), getting the wind knocked out of you by this threaded community of women and the impact the abduction of these sisters has had on their lives. Phillips describes her novel as a spiral, beginning with a tight, localized event, and expanding outward over the course of a year. DISAPPEARING EARTH is told over the course of a year in the province of Petropavlovsk in Russia, and begins with the abduction of two young sisters in August. I read the first chapter of DISAPPEARING EARTH a while ago, and set it back down after thinking it might be too thematically intense for me, but I couldn’t really move on from it, something about it had left a new wrinkle in my memory, and I tried again. Lori Feathers, Interabang Books, Dallas, TX The mystery of the girls’ fates will keep you on the edge of your seat, but even more impressive is the way Phillips portrays the lives of her female characters-women who struggle to obtain a better life for themselves and their children, lives unencumbered by the racism, economic instability, and isolation inherent in living in a disregarded and harsh corner of Russia’s vast landscape.” “A thrilling and original debut novel that explores the lives of several women living in Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula whose lives are unknowingly connected by the unsolved disappearances of three girls. Casey Coonerty, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA Summer 2020 Reading Group Indie Next List

The stories of the women there-their family dynamics, their hopes and fears, the economic and cultural divide of various communities-tell a moving story about this place in a moment in time, but ultimately about the universal struggle of women living with the expectations placed on them.

She beautifully transports us to a region of the world that I had never heard of and now can’t stop thinking about.

Novel disappearing earth