Bug-out Bag

Bug-out Bag is a piece of literary fiction that explores loss without death and the nature of honesty through the first person experiences of April Lander. April Lander was taught how to people-watch and pay attention to small details by her father Chef Michael Lander. At the age of ten, April discovers a mysterious leather bag hidden in a closet that is marked with her father’s initials and filled with a number of disturbing items including an ID with his face but someone else’s name. The morning after her sixteenth birthday party the bag and Michael Lander is gone, and a new bag is left waiting for April with an enigmatic note from her father attached. April and her mother struggle to connect across the void left by the vanished father and husband as she becomes an adult, attempts to love, and starts a career as a deception detection examiner. Bug-out Bag delves into the lessons that sticks with us, the pieces of our forbearers we accept into ourselves, and what it means to truly trust another person.