LGBT Book & Video Blog

"People say to me, 'Well, you've lived in New York and Boston, so why don't you write about those places,' " he says during a recent San Francisco visit. The answer is that Kansas fits his literary and, perhaps, personal notion of "feeling like being an outcast or other in a place that other people see as safe."

The Kansas of Heim's fiction is anything but safe. His well-reviewed 1995 debut, "Mysterious Skin," deals with child molestation, repressed memory and, oh yeah, possible abduction by aliens. His third novel is about a young methamphetamine addict named Scott who returns to Kansas to spend time with his dying mother and to indulge her obsession with kidnapped children. His support for her is tested when he discovers a teenage boy locked in the basement.

"We Disappear" (HarperCollins Perennia; $13.95) is really about identity and personality, about our constant struggle to know who we are, and about how easy it can be to lose our grip on reality when we try to alter our memories. As a little girl, the mother in the book disappeared from her own family for a time and now, with cancer working its way through her frail body, she is about to disappear forever. She has also disappeared into the stories of the missing children she clips from newspapers and magazines. Meanwhile, the character of Scott is also disappearing into his addiction and the demons that have haunted his life ever since he began cruising the park for clandestine encounters with older men when he was a teenager.

More of Scott Heim back in Kansas with 'We Disappear' @ San Francisco Chronicle. Purchase We Disappear: A Novel (P.S.).