In the wake of an infection that has left Baton Rouge unsettled and roiling with the ‘undead’, three young friends – Mazoch, Vermaelen and Rachel – band together to search for Mazoch’s missing father. Their mission is to visit all the places he once lingered: his favourite fast food restaurants, the movie theatre he frequented with his son and the city park. As hurricane season looms, uncertainty and suspicion of each other’s motives threatens to pull the group apart, but still, the friends’ search continues. Over the course of a week, day after day, they haunt the places Mazoch’s father once haunted, confronting the same persistent hope that faces all who grieve: that whomever, whatever they have lost, will return to them, in one shape or another. Turning typical zombie fare on its head, Bennett Sims delivers a wise and philosophical rumination on the nature of memory and loss in this remarkable debut novel.
