Nathan Gower is the award-winning author of The Act of Disappearing (Mira Books/HarperCollins 2024). He holds an MFA in fiction writing from Spalding University and a PhD in humanities with emphasis in aesthetics and creativity from the University of Louisville. His work has been published in Had, Baltimore Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Louisville Magazine, Louisville Review, New Southerner, Santa Fe Literary Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. He currently serves as Professor of English at Campbellsville University and has served in editorial positions at the Louisville Review, Campbellsville Review, and Russell Creek Review. He lives in central Kentucky with his family.
The Act of Disappearing
World-renowned photographer Jonathan Aster has been harboring a never-before-seen photograph of a woman falling from a train bridge, clutching what appears to be a baby to her chest. And he recruits a little-known novelist named Julia White to research the story. Julia has been struggling: broke and drowning in her late mother's medical bills, her first book has barely sold any copies and now she's reeling after a one-night stand with her ex-boyfriend, who's completely ghosted her. So why would he ask her? Alternating between present-day Brooklyn and Kentucky as it enters the 1960s, the story unfolds as Julia races to find answers: Who was the woman in the photograph? Why was she on the bridge? And what happened to the baby? Each detail is more propulsive than the last as Julia unravels the mystery surrounding the Fairchilds of Gray Station and discovers a story more staggering than anything she could have imagined.