Part detective novel part ghost story this brilliant debut asks a tantalizing question: What
really happens when a girl goes missing? A thrilling many-faceted gothic novel: Erin Kate
Ryan’s Quantum Girl Theory belongs in the same company as the work of Shirley Jackson and
Carmen Maria Machado.”—Kelly Link author of Get in Trouble ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS
OF 2022—CrimeReads Mary Garrett has a gift for finding missing girls a special kind of
clairvoyance she calls the sight.” Lured by a poster and the promise of a reward she arrives
at a small town in the Jim Crow South to discover that not one but three girls have
vanished—two of whom are Black and whose disappearances have gone uninvestigated outside their
own community. She sets out to find them. As it turns out Mary is herself a missing girl.” In
another life she was a Bennington College sophomore named Paula Jean Welden who disappeared
one night in 1946. The case captivated the nation’s imagination triggering front-page
headlines scores of dubious sightings and a wave of speculation: Who was Paula Jean really
and why had she disappeared? As Mary’s search for the three missing girls intensifies so do
the glimpses of Paula Jean’s other possible lives: She is a circus showgirl hiding from her
past a literary forger on the verge of being caught a McCarthy-era informant in love with a
woman she meets in a Communist cell. With the signals multiplying the locals beginning to
resent her presence and threats coming from all sides Mary wonders whether she can trust
anyone—most of all herself. Both a captivating mystery and a powerful thought experiment
Quantum Girl Theory spins out a new way of seeing those who seem to disappear before our eyes.
