One of the things I most appreciate about fiction is the opportunity to encounter vivid stories set in parts of the world that I might rarely, if ever, think about. That’s certainly the case with Julia Phillips’ debut novel, DISAPPEARING EARTH, which is set on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Prior to picking up the book, I probably could have located Kamchatka on a world map (the publisher includes a map in the book’s front matter), but that would be about the extent of my knowledge.

After reading this book, I can’t say that I’m as knowledgeable about Kamchatka as Phillips clearly is, but her empathic, expansive storytelling has given me a glimpse into the world of more than a dozen fascinating characters, many of whom have spent their entire lives in this remote part of the world. Much like classic Russian novels of yore, DISAPPEARING EARTH opens with a list of dramatis personae and their relationships to one another (plus a helpful inclusion of characters’ nicknames, which are far from intuitive for many native English speakers).

"Julia Phillips is a deservedly confident writer and a beautifully skillful storyteller. It can’t be overlooked that even in this very literary and accomplished novel, she is still building an effective mystery plot..."

Kamchatka’s remoteness is really driven home by repeated reminders that the time difference between Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the largest city on Kamchatka, and Moscow is nine hours. That means that residents of Kamchatka are actually farther away from Moscow than I am --- and I live in Boston!

But of course, one of the other things that I appreciate about fiction is its ability to find or create points of connection with characters whose lives are vastly unlike ours --- and yet, in other ways, not so different. The novel opens with preteen sisters Alyona and Sophia. Alyona, the elder sister, fascinates and terrifies Sophia with an account of a Kamchatka town that, in the aftermath of an earthquake and subsequent tsunami, completely disappeared off the face of the earth, as if it never even existed. In the wake of this dramatic story, the girls become the center of a different drama. They are asked for help by a seemingly harmless man, but their offers of assistance go horribly wrong, and they are not seen again.

DISAPPEARING EARTH is structured with one chapter per month (plus one for New Year’s Eve) for an entire year, starting with the girls’ abduction in August and continuing with a short but vivid conclusion the following July. The chapters read in many ways like linked short stories; each one is beautifully realized in its own right, and many have been previously published as stand-alone pieces of short fiction. But the stories are also unified, not only by virtue of geography and recurring characters, but through thematic unities as well.

The idea of disappearances runs throughout the narrative, beginning with that harrowing opening chapter and occurring numerous times --- including more literal disappearances, like lost dogs and runaway daughters, and more conceptual ones, like vanishing Native cultures and the slow or sudden dissolution of love. Perhaps even the concept of a Russian nation is disappearing, as one character suggests: “The communities Revmira grew up in had splintered, making them easy places to be forgotten, easy places to disappear. Revmira’s parents had raised her in a strong home, an idyllic village, a principled people, a living Even culture, a socialist nation of great achievement. That nation collapsed. Nothing was left in the place it had occupied.”

Julia Phillips is a deservedly confident writer and a beautifully skillful storyteller. It can’t be overlooked that even in this very literary and accomplished novel, she is still building an effective mystery plot --- and readers will be sure to look ahead eagerly to what this talented young author will do next.