Synopsis

Some secrets we keep even from ourselves

Philosophy professor Neil Weber can’ t think of one good reason to get up in the morning. His wife has left him, his academic research has sputtered, and the prospect of tenure is more remote than ever.

Until Lucia Vanotti disappears.

A college student at the Southern university where Neil teaches, Lucia has a secret of her own— one that haunts her relationships and leads to destructive, reckless behavior. When Neil is drawn into the mystery of her disappearance, he finds himself suddenly relevant again. But at what cost? Each clue pulls him deeper into Lucia’s dark past, but also into the hidden lives of his closest friends and colleagues.

What drove Lucia to risk everything? And why does Neil, a professor who hardly knew her, care to find her? From campus classrooms to sex dens to backwoods hideaways, The Department shows the world through the eyes of Lucia and Neil as they descend into obsession, delusion, and the dangerous terrain of memory— uncovering the trauma that drives them to behave in ways even they themselves could never have predicted.

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Excerpt

NEIL

Now

What can I say about Phaedra Lewis except from the moment I met her, I wanted her. I remember the early days, sitting at the bar, burning down cigarette after cigarette like we wanted to inflict real damage. Gin and tonics on the counter, swiveling on our stools in the dim orange light.

“Why are you here?” she asked me one night.

“Like, here at the bar?”

“Here at school.” It was our first year as grad students in philosophy. I was already wasted, but I finished off my gin.

“Um,” I said, as “Guns of Brixton” came on the jukebox and a group of girls stumbled in. “I think because I watched a woman die once.” I had never uttered the words out loud before.

Phaedra’s eyes widened, and I felt her lean in. “That is not what I was expecting.” Wisps of her blonde hair floated like strands of a spider web in the blurred bar light.

Truth be told, most of my memories are fragments. Broken bits, cut glass. But this one – this memory of the woman drowning – was different.

About the Author

Jacqueline Faber is an author and freelance writer in Los Angeles. Her debut novel, The Department, is a dark academic thriller about a reckless college girl who goes missing, a jaded philosophy professor who goes looking for her, and the terrifying secrets that emerge along the way.

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