Decomposition Book

Savannah's friendship with her closest friend has just ended in a bitter break, and she withdraws to her parents' empty lake house in upstate New York to recover. Alone and stung by the rejection, she spends her days in a haze of drinking and rumination. Then one morning she wakes in the woods behind the house, lying next to a dead body.

She does not call the police. Instead she picks up a journal lying nearby and reads it, following the last months of the woman's life as she struggled to survive in the wilderness. The woman, Ava, turns out to have been funny and sharp, and for the first time in a long while Savannah has someone she can talk to.

The deeper she reads into Ava's ordeal, the more her sense of reality shifts. The Ava on the page and the ghost now in front of her seem to draw closer with every entry. Savannah develops feelings for Ava unlike any she has had for anyone else, and losing her could leave Savannah haunted for the rest of her life. The story leaves open whether Savannah is coming apart or has found the friend she needed all along.