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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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DISAPPEARING ACT

Jiordan Castle

A True Story

Moving and evocative, Disappearing Act is a YA memoir-in-verse following author Jiordan Castle's coming of age as her family reckons with the aftershocks of her father's imprisonment.
It was the summer before high school,
the beginning of everything.
but also an end.

Jiordan's family was never quite like everyone else's, with her father's mood swings, her mother's attempts at normalcy, and her two older sisters with a different last name. But on the surface, they fit in.
Until the day the FBI came knocking on the door.

After that, her father's mood plunged to a dangerous new low. There was an investigation into his business and a sentencing in court. Soon Jiordan's father would have to leave home, and her family would change forever.

Reckoning with the aftershocks of her father's incarceration, Jiordan had to navigate friends who couldn't quite understand what she was going through, along with the highs and lows of first love. Under it all was the question: If Jiordan's father was gone, why did she feel like the one who was disappearing?

DISAPPEARING ACT blends technology, emotional intelligence, and social justice issues to create a coming-of-age story that shares DNA with Laurie Halse Andeson's Shout and Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X.

Jiordan Castle is the author of All His Breakable Things. Her work has appeared in Hobart, HuffPost, New Ohio Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. She is a contributor to the LA-based food and culture magazine Compound Butter. Originally from New York, she has an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College.
Available products
Book

Published 2023-08-15 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers

Book

Published 2023-08-15 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers

Comments

This vivid memoir shines a light on the difficulty of navigating a complex family dynamic through a beautiful blend of prose and poetry.

Disappearing Act is a gut-punch of a beautiful, honest book. As someone who has experienced watching a loved one navigate incarceration, this story spoke to me on so many levels. From Castle's thoughtfully rendered moments of negative space and loud silence on the page, to the lyrical letters to her future self and the tender care with which she portrays a family in crisis, I could not put this book down. A stunning, heart-opening work of art.

Disappearing Act is gorgeously written with heartbreaking honesty. Castle dispatches scenes from her teen self in a powerful exploration of trauma and hope. Castle's debut memoir-in-verse picks up the pieces from her shattered world and illuminates each fragmented memory with razor-sharp precision. The result is a stunning mosaic of a teen girl who discovers clarity and strength on the other side of a familial catastrophe.

Searingly honest and compulsively readable, Disappearing Act holds just the kind of poems - and story - I wish I'd had in hand when I was a young person.

A gorgeous memoir-in-verse, Jiordan Castle's Disappearing Act is a heart-wrenching look at the cognitive dissonance that occurs when trying to reconcile who someone is with who you want them to be. Coming of age amidst her father's incarceration, Castle's story is a testament to the strength it takes to navigate high school when everything is going wrong. A story of family, love, friendship, loss, and grief, this sharp and evocative memoir offers a personal look at mental illness and the power of friendship and family. Disappearing Act is a must-read.

The Junior Library Guild has recently given DISAPPEARING ACT the distinction of being a gold standard selection Read more...