If I Descend Alone

As the world edges toward Collapse, societies descend beneath the earth in hibernation pods, a single chosen memory replaying in their minds. As our narrator searches for a memory to preserve him through the collapse, he discovers that the entire existence of a friend from childhood, Max, has been obliterated from his mind. 

His journey to find this forgotten friend reflects on the nature of memory, time, and the creations of the human imagination--art, literature, music, movies--that allow us to persist through loss.

When our narrator finally meets Max, a new/old friendship unfolds-as does the mystery of why the memory of Max has been erased. The tangled web involves the narrator's often reflected upon but estranged brother, whose revelations threaten to further rupture the characters' concepts of reality. The allusions peppered throughout the novel regarding possible alternate dimensions become realized in the kaleidoscopic finale, and offers a type of hope, a strange catharsis, however unconventional. 

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind meets Dandelion Wine, If I Descend Alone explores vanishing histories, parallel dimensions, and the often fragile but necessary beauty of human connection. Equal parts comic and cosmic, this novel considers what remains of us when the future disappears-and whether meaning can survive without witnesses, without legacy.