"Your father isn't coming back.

Your father isn't, and neither is mine."

Let me get one thing straight before anyone gets mad at me: our family wasn't perfect before he left, either.

Middle sister Jen knows it's one thing to waste your own life, but quite another to waste the lives of a whole family. Leaving must have seemed like the best option to Dad. But she's too smart not to know better.

Her older sister Casey hides her bitterness in a shell, going out every night and disguising her pain in sex and cigarettes.

And the two little ones cling to whichever sibling shares the motel bed with them.

For oldest brother Jared, losing a game of Rock Paper Scissors is supposed to be the best option, a ticket out, but it doesn't feel that way. Will, who wins, stays behind to be the man, to take care of his younger siblings and his mom, Amy, as they set off to find their father, living out of the pickup or in sweaty motel rooms. He's got to be the husband and father and brother, the Holy Trinity rolled into one tall, dark, and handsome package.

Will tries to keep his sister Casey from going out with random boys every night, looking for escape.

Will comforts his youngest sibling, Tommy, when Jared leaves.

Will makes a momentous decision that breaks his family's heart and brings them back together.

And David, their father, tries to be the best man he knows how to be, and fails.

Someday Never Comes is a gripping exploration of family ties and traumas and the patterns that can be impossible to escape. It's a coming-of-age story told through a series of viewpoints: Casey, Jen, Will, Jared, their father, and the boy Casey can't forget. Their struggles reveal an intense and poignant love that leads one of them to death, one to reunion with the family, and one to the possibility of a new life that breaks the age-old pattern.

About the author

Rebecca Grove Munson was born on March 29, 1984, in St. Louis, Missouri.

She earned honors degrees from John Burroughs School, Columbia University, Oxford University, and University of California, Berkeley, then won postdoctoral fellowships to UCLA, and Emory University. She joined the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University and became the Assistant Director. Her teaching and research focused on Shakespeare, but during her many years of education, she never stopped writing fiction.

In 2018, Rebecca was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. With steely determination and no hint of self-pity, she continued to work, teach, write, and enjoy life. She started the blog Pitiless Achilles to chronicle her experiences of cancer and cofounded Young and Strong, an online support group at Dana-Farber Cancer Center.

Rebecca died in her childhood home on August 13, 2021. That it was Friday the 13th would have amused her.