Now Is Not the Time to Panic

In the summer of 1996, sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge is an aspiring writer bored and adrift in Coalfield, Tennessee, until she meets Zeke, a talented, equally awkward artist who has just moved to town. Together they create an unsigned poster carrying one enigmatic line — "The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us." — and begin quietly papering the town with it. The poster takes on a life of its own: copies multiply, strangers start making their own, and the town spirals into what becomes known as the Coalfield Panic.

Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge has built a careful adult life as a wife, mother and novelist, the secret of that summer buried along with her first love. When a journalist named Mazzy Brower calls, chasing the origin of the poster for a story, Frances has to decide how much of the truth about herself, and about Zeke, she is willing to give up.

Kevin Wilson, author of the bestselling Nothing to See Here, moves between the two timelines to trace how one reckless act of teenage art collaboration echoes into adulthood — a novel about first creative partnership, first love, and the strange, unpredictable power of the things we make.