The Inventory of Vanishing Things

About this book

In contemporary Baltimore, Mara Wynn, a woman defined by abrasion and precision, takes a job at the Department of Unclaimed Property & Evidence Disposal to hide from a humiliating career collapse. Surrounded by the detritus of lost lives—wallets, prosthetics, sealed boxes—she attempts to impose order on chaos under the watchful eyes of her supervisor, Dev Patel, her poetic coworker, Yasmin El-Amin, and the warehouse’s soulful tinkerer, Mr. Leon Grant. The discovery of a tin labeled 'FOR WHEN YOU'RE READY' containing items linked to Mara's estranged mother shatters her carefully maintained detachment. Faced with an impending 'final disposition' auction that threatens to erase thousands of histories, Mara begins breaking protocol to reunite objects with their owners. Her covert mission leads her into the lives of strangers—a Salvadoran father, a displaced nurse, an aging musician—forcing her to confront the difference between bureaucratic processing and human connection. As the department crackdown looms and Yasmin takes the fall for Mara's indiscretions, Mara must risk her safe haven to orchestrate a night of restitution, learning that some things must be given away to be truly kept.