“Vail’s subtle touches of magical realism enrich her insights about the difficulties of young womanhood without overwhelming them. This has charm to spare.” –Starred Publisher’s Weekly Review

Her best friend is missing, her career is a disaster, she’s stuck living with her parents, and now her heart isn’t beating.

Can Brooklyn Thomas confront her past to save her present?

Summer is off to a bad start and getting worse. Brooklyn Thomas is pretty sure she’s mostly dead. She can’t feel her heart beat and she’s disappearing: her reflection keeps vanishing from mirrors. No one else seems to notice. Not her coworkers at the artisanal doughnut shop she works at after failing at her high-paying marketing job. Not her crush, whom she keeps humiliating herself in front of. Not her parents, whose basement suite she’s stuck living in now that she can’t afford rent anymore. To top it all off, she’s hallucinating stars from all her favorite TV shows who want Brooklyn to pull herself together and face the truth about what happened to her career, her best friend, and her relationship with her brother.

As her past collides with her present in painful and unexpected ways, Brooklyn must decide if she’s strong enough to confront what haunts her and get a second chance at a real life—before mostly dead turns into actually dead.

Brooklyn Thomas Isn’t Here explores how women contort and minimize themselves to fit the roles society and family offer them, and the serious price they pay for doing so.

Alli Vail is a former journalist for national and provincial award-winning community newspapers. She is a content writer and marketer for literary festivals and nonprofits, and has worked in tech, video games, and politics. She’s happy she’s no longer the only woman in work meetings. She studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University.

Alli lives in Vancouver, Canada with her anxious dog (who she wrote about for The Globe and Mail) and her partner.

Alli Vail's profile page

“With vivid prose and a heroine to root for, Brooklyn Thomas Isn’t Here is a clever take on the ways women change shape to fit into society. Part existential study and part feminist rally cry, Alli Vail’s incisive debut is a reminder that it is never too late for a second chance at life.”

Holly James, Author of<I> Nothing but the Truth</I>

“An honest, compelling page-turner…. a thought provoking read from an author with an experienced hand and an incredible depth of understanding for what women can experience in a man’s world.”

Stella Harvey, Author of <I>Finding Callidora</I> & Founder, Whistler Writers Festival

"In Brooklyn Thomas Isn’t Here, the unreal becomes real and the surreal works in a donut shop. This thought-provoking story about a woman who exhibits key signs of being dead while she struggles to find whatever it is that makes life worth living is a twisted tale about fitting in, speaking up, grief, love and obsession. Alli Vail is definitely here, and she’s a fiercely imaginative new voice in Canadian fiction."

Katherine Fawcett, <I>The Swan Suit, The Little Washer of Sorrows</I>