Monday's Not Coming

Claudia Coleman returns to Washington, D.C. after a summer with her grandmother in Georgia, expecting to start eighth grade beside her best friend, Monday Charles. Monday never answered Claudia's letters. When school opens, she is nowhere to be found.

The explanations Claudia is given do not add up, and the adults around her seem untroubled. Claudia is dyslexic, and Monday has always been the one who helped her at school and gave her nerve. Now she has to look for answers on her own.

As she searches, Claudia begins to suspect that Monday was hiding painful things she never told anyone. The narrative moves between three periods: two years before Monday vanishes, the year she vanishes, and the year after. Each timeline adds pieces to a picture Claudia cannot yet see whole.

A young adult mystery about friendship, family and the girls whose absence goes unremarked, it deals with child abuse and neglect. The author received the 2019 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent for it. Claudia keeps looking, and no one else seems to be looking for Monday at all.