University of Pittsburgh Press
Those Who Vanish
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Those Who Vanish

By Patricia Grace King
The stories in Patricia Grace King’s ravishing Those Who Vanish chronicle the consequences of inhabiting spaces both physical and psychic where one doesn’t naturally belong. In stories ranging from conflict-ravaged Guatemala to the American Midwest and beyond, King’s unrelenting exploration of our need to survive while retaining our humanity propels these narratives into surprising and heart-breaking terrain. As one character poignantly asks of another, ‘The real question is, do you want to be found?’ Those Who Vanish doesn’t present us with easy answers but masterfully interrogates what it means to be lost and the often-blinding nature of self-discovery.
Quan Barry, author of The Unveiling and judge of the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Hardcover $24.00

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To disappear meant to die. In those days, in that place, almost everyone knew. With sentences that cut clean to the bone and wrench the heart, Patricia Grace King invites us to comprehend the traumas of wartime and the legacies they create. As we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the 1996 Guatemalan Peace Accords, we find ourselves still urgently needing to understand the wars the United States has fomented abroad.

Offering readers a direct window into the Guatemalan internal armed conflict (1960–1996), the stories in Those Who Vanish wrestle with the question of individual responsibility in the face of global forces, portraying with sensitivity American citizens in Guatemala during the conflict and the later experience of Guatemalan expats in America. We see how trauma ripples: through generations of a family, across oceans and borders, and even into the very fabric of our relationships.

Upon finding human teeth on their doorstep, two peace workers bury them out of respect for the dead. A tomboyish blonde American who grew up poor in rural Maryland must confront fraught issues of class when she begins dating a wealthy Guatemalan man. At a Mennonite sleepaway camp in Kentucky, two missionary kids connect over their shared experiences in Central America—until they don’t, hormones and hard memories bubbling between them. Never once does King shy away from difficult terrain, instead rendering the most awkward and awful of moments with clarity and precision, interrogating choices at every turn. And what were we doing? Why had we come? These are questions worth pondering.

Winner of the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Those Who Vanish is a collection we can’t afford not to read. Through stories that explore faith, violence, survival, and the resilience of the human heart, King insists we think critically about foreign wars and the roles we might play in them. Likewise, she asks us to consider the personal wars we wage against each other, and our own selves, as we decide who we are and what we’re willing to fight for.

More Praise

Patricia Grace King’s collection is compelling for so many reasons.

Compulsive Reader

In the world of Those Who Vanish, every absence is present, every presence is anxiously charged, and every unspoken word hangs between characters as dangerous as a grenade. These are unsentimental stories of cultural collisions and the aftershocks of violent conflict, which Patricia Grace King infuses with a gentle and generous life force.

Christopher Castellani, author of Last Seen

Courageous and provocative, edgy and timeless, Those Who Vanish is a tapestry of stories that leave the reader entranced and aching with truths. Each character confronts, in dramatically different ways, the barriers of time, place, and circumstance while searching for love in a world fraught with violence and sorrow. The tales are finely crafted and deeply felt. Patricia Grace King’s prose is concise, rich, and transformative. It demands to be read.

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, author of The Orchard

Those Who Vanish is a brilliant and strikingly assured debut. Each story is so vividly imagined and beautifully crafted that it offers the reader a whole world. Charting the experiences of Guatemalan citizens and North American expats under state violence, this varied and substantive collection asks us to consider what it means to believe, to seek safety, and to belong. Patricia Grace King is a powerful writer, and this book will remain in your mind for a long time.

Alix Ohlin, author of We Want What We Want

Patricia Grace King’s astonishing stories explore characters who must locate themselves within the vast incomprehensible violence of nearly four decades of state terror in Guatemala. With clear-eyed compassion and intelligence, King plumbs the complexities of these lives shaped by violence: the fear and idealism, naiveté and exhaustion, the righteousness and questioning and faltering and courage. Those Who Vanish is a transporting, harrowing, exhilarating collection, a work of witness that surely grows out of deep and critical love.

Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of The Five Wounds

'You don’t like this story? You wanted a love story, maybe?' Patricia Grace King’s pen is so steady, one forgets they are reading—even as each vanishing hurls them from one unvarnished reality of war into the next. These stories grab by the neck, denying the reader the same reprieve withheld from the characters and the human realities they represent. No, these aren’t love stories. But who needs that when you can be dizzying and unforgettable? Those Who Vanish is an honest, accomplished, and stunning debut that demands and deserves to be read.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento, author of Obligations to the Wounded

288 Pages

September, 2026

isbn : 9780822949237

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about the author

Patricia Grace King

Patricia Grace King grew up in North Carolina and has since lived in Spain, Guatemala, and the United Kingdom, where she resides. Her short fiction has won the Miami University Novella Prize, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, and the Florida Review’s Leiby Prize. Other stories have been published by Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Narrative, and Nimrod. A former Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, she has received additional support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the British Library. Those Who Vanish is her first book.

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Patricia Grace King