Last Seen: A Novel

by Christopher Castellani

Overview

“A morally complex and life-affirming exploration of what it means to be alive, and of the enduring power of love to transform, reanimate, and redeem.” —Celeste Ng, New York Times-bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts

I am one of those boys they keep finding in the river.

Caleb was driving home for Christmas. Steven was pounding beers at a local bar. Matthew was out looking for his ex-girlfriend. Leo was walking in the woods on a winter night. Then they disappeared.

Days, weeks, years later, their bodies turn up in icy rivers hundreds of miles apart. How did they get there? What, if anything, connects them? Some of their loved ones believe the official answers. Some are convinced the boys are victims of an insidious network called the Smiley Face Killers. Some are trying to forget them altogether. Meanwhile, Caleb, Steven, Matthew, and Leo find one other—and other boys like them—in the murky depths of the afterlife. Each tells his story in his own way, speaking his version of truth, confessing his desires and grievances and even his hopes for a future he still somehow believes belongs to him. Each revelation brings the reader deeper into their intertwined fates, along a journey through the landscapes of identity, intimacy, and the haunting echoes of unresolved grief.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798217061044
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/17/2026
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368

About the Author

Christopher Castellani is the author of four previous novels (the trilogy A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love) and The Art of Perspective, a book of essays on the craft of fiction. He is the winner of a 2024 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim and Mass Cultural Council fellow, and the 2022-24 writer in residence at Brandeis University. His fourth novel, Leading Men, is currently being adapted into a film for Fox Searchlight Pictures by Oscar-winning producer Peter Spears and director Luca Guadagnino. He lives in Boston and Provincetown.

Hometown:

Arlington, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

December 7, 1972

Place of Birth:

Wilmington, Delaware

Education:

B.A., Swarthmore College, 1994; M.A./A.B.D., Tufts University, 1998; M.A., Boston University, 1999

Editorial Reviews

Christopher Castellani is a master of portraying love and longing, and his latest novel may be his finest yet. Deftly interweaving the stories of four doomed young men—and those they leave behind—Last Seen explores our changing notions of masculinity and the ways grief can both make and unmake us. A morally complex and life-affirming exploration of what it means to be alive, and of the enduring power of love to transform, reanimate, and redeem.” —Celeste Ng, New York Times-bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts

“A brutal and luminous novel. Christopher Castellani delves into the turbulent waters of one of American society’s most misunderstood characters: the troubled young male. Last Seen begins in death—boys mysteriously found in rivers—but in unraveling the mysteries of their fate, Castellani creates a mesmerizing panorama of young lives on the brink. This novel haunted me with its clarity and rage. Enter at your own risk.” —Christopher Bollen, author of Havoc

“A riveting thriller of unparalleled heart. At once a murder mystery of dead young men and a kaleidoscope of beautifully felt humanity, Christopher Castellani’s Last Seen is a virtuosic performance by a brilliant storyteller: smooth, incandescent, and devastating. When Castellani trains his precisely observant eye on each of the young men who died, they shimmer to life, and the resulting crescendo cracks open the heart. I gulped this book down.” —Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

From the Publisher