The Department follows 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.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Jacqueline Faber’s The Department, which releases on February 4th 2025.
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 Neil’s Southern university, Lucia has a secret of her own—one that haunts her relationships and leads to reckless, destructive behavior. When Neil is drawn into the mystery of her disappearance, he finds new energy, purpose, and relevance. 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 has driven Lucia to risk everything? And why does Neil, a professor who hardly knew her, care so deeply about finding her? From campus classrooms to sex dens to backwoods hideaways, The Department reveals the world through the dual perspectives of Lucia and Neil as they descend into obsession, delusion, and the dangerous terrain of memory—uncovering the traumas that drive them to behave in ways they never could have predicted or imagined.
Chapter Excerpt
In the fridge was a package of ground beef about to expire. Once upon a time, I would’ve scoured the internet for recipes. Spicy larb, stuffed peppers, empanadas. Phaedra and I, bent over the stove, an open bottle of pinot noir on the counter. What was the point now? I tossed the beef in a pan, watched it gray, then brown.
After Phae and I had received our job offers, we’d come down for a weekend. I remember walking the campus and feeling how different it was from grad school in New England, where you were always aware of your smallness in the great pantheon of ideas. Here, the buildings were a mash-up. Pink marble against polished steel, Beaux-arts next to cool modern. The very architecture seemed to insist that everything could be remade. And by extension, you could be relevant to the history of thought.
I remember feeling like the whole thing was a coup Phaedra and I had somehow pulled off. We rented a car and drove around, bypassing all those southern suburban enclaves for a loft in the industrial part of town. No neighbors to complain when Phaedra cranked the music. When she stepped out of the shower naked, towel twisted up on her head, singing at the top of her lungs. Sleater-Kinney, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits, and Ari Up.
I know that it hurts, but my love died, quickly, she sang into the open space of our bedroom.
Now Phaedra had a new life, and I had a shitty apartment. I tried to picture her leaping onto the bed naked, dripping wet on the duvet, all-girl punk bands blaring, Tim standing dumbstruck in his wire-rimmed glasses and tailored slacks.
I ate the ground beef. It tasted like despair.
When I finished, I left the dish in the sink. Add it to the pile. Tonight, I needed to write. Because of tenure. Because I’d lied to Paul. Because, if I could produce just one solid piece of writing, maybe I could find my way back.
But as I pulled a book from my bag, the flyer for the missing girl went sailing to the floor. I picked it up. For a split second, I felt a pinprick of recognition. Like I’d seen her before. Some fragment of a memory, too hazy to recall.
I stared at her. Lucia Vanotti. She was pretty.
She looked nothing like Phaedra, who had short, blonde hair, heavy eyelids, and a more severe jawline. And yet, looking down at Lucia’s picture, I suddenly had a memory of Phaedra, standing in the doorway of our loft as I moved the last of my boxes out.
“I love you, Neil,” she’d said. “But I can’t be with someone who isn’t an agent in his own life.”
“What does that even mean?” I’d asked at the time.
“It means you’re not someone who does things. You’re the person to whom things are done.”
I don’t remember what I said in response, and it doesn’t much matter. What matters is how those words have floated up to the surface of my consciousness time and again. I think of that beach in California. This is what Phaedra was saying: You are not a man who saves. You are a man who stands on the shore. You will always stand on the shore, watching the woman drown.
I stared at the picture of Lucia Vanotti, that strange feeling of recognition tugging at the corners of my mind. Instead of balling it up and throwing it out, I smoothed the flyer against my wall and taped it in place.
