The Department: Debut Thriller
The Department by debut author Jacqueline Faber
Author Interview + Book & Author Info + Author Pet Corner!Don’t miss any ITW Debut Author interviews! Click the link here.The Department
Some secrets we keep even from ourselves
Philosophy professor Neil Weber can’t think of one good reason to get up in the morning. His wife has left him, his academic research has sputtered, and the prospect of tenure is more remote than ever.
Until Lucia Vanotti disappears.
A college student at Neil’s Southern university, Lucia has a secret of her own—one that haunts her relationships and leads to reckless, destructive behavior. When Neil is drawn into the mystery of her disappearance, he finds new energy, purpose, and relevance. But at what cost? Each clue pulls him deeper into Lucia’ s dark past, but also into the hidden lives of his closest friends and colleagues.
What has driven Lucia to risk everything? And why does Neil, a professor who hardly knew her, care so deeply about finding her? From campus classrooms to sex dens to backwoods hideaways, The Department reveals the world through the dual perspectives of Lucia and Neil as they descend into obsession, delusion, and the dangerous terrain of memory—uncovering the traumas that drive them to behave in ways they never could have predicted or imagined.
To purchase The Department, click either of the following links: Amazon and Bookshop.org The Department features Neil Weber, a philosophy professor. Tell us about Neil and why you chose a philosophy professor as a central character?
I’m drawn to characters who are at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.
Neil’s wife has left him for someone else in their philosophy department. His scholarly work has stalled. He’s an ethicist who often behaves in ethically questionable ways. Yet he is deeply entrenched in the vernacular of academia. He lives in his head, yet his actions have serious real-life consequences. I wanted to capture the tension between those two modes of existence.
Interestingly enough, the heaviest philosophical lifting is not done by Neil, but is mediated, instead, through Lucia’s perspective, particularly around our relationship to mortality and our experiences of loss. Lucia is a student on campus who goes missing, and we follow her narrative during the year leading up to her disappearance. Neil’s story unfolds as he pieces together the events of this young woman’s life, which bear on his own personal tragedies in unexpected ways.
The Department goes back and forth between the perspectives of Lucia and Neil. What drew you to writing your debut with two primary viewpoint characters?
I knew I wanted two primary (and sometimes conflicting) points of view because I’m interested in the inherent misunderstandings that naturally arise when we are voyeurs, outsiders looking in.
There’s a “true crime” fascination at work in The Department, as Neil tries to uncover the mystery of Lucia. But her perspective deepens, complicates, and adds layers of meaning to it. This felt important because the novel is not just a thriller about a young woman’s disappearance; it is also a story about our attempts to survive our own losses.
I needed access to deep interiority for both these characters to really explore it.
The Department digs into a dark side of academics. Did you draw on personal experiences in academia to create the world in your debut?
Academia is a unique space that many of us inhabit for only a handful of years. A world that we pass through en route to somewhere else. It’s a time of transition and intellectual and personal growth.
Often, students are away from their parents for the first time. Professors are the primary adults in their lives. They function partly as stand-ins for parental authority, but they are also the envoys of new ideas and radical lines of inquiry. It’s an exciting time full of change and possibility. But also, as you can imagine, an opportunity for things to go terribly awry.
My own experiences were very different from those in The Department, but because I was part of that world for so long, that cadence of academia feels ingrained in me.
How did your education in comparative literature impact writing a thriller?
My doctoral dissertation was on loss and language.
While writing it, I experienced a loss of my own and suddenly found myself walking the line between theory and practice. I turned to thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Kafka, to try and understand how to navigate my own losses. I found myself asking questions about trauma, memory, and relationships–questions that seeped into the novel.
The Department is not an attempt to “answer” them or offer prescriptive solutions. Instead, it’s my way of exploring these ideas, while hopefully gripping the reader.
What can we find you doing when you aren’t reading and writing thrillers?
Traveling and spending time with my family, particularly my 7-year-old son. In my former life, I fancied myself a dancer. Hip hop, samba, salsa. If you’ve got music, I’ll bring the dance floor.
What are you working on now?
A literary suspense that verges on family drama. It’s about a woman who meets a stranger claiming to have information about her past. When the stranger’s dead body turns up, it sends her back to the hometown she fled 15 years earlier in hopes of uncovering the family secrets that lay buried there.
Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:
Aim for specificity. If there is a more precise way to describe a feeling, a character, a longing, a misbelief, set your sights there. Ironically, the more specific we are in our writing, the more universal and essentially “true” the experience feels to our readers.
Terrific advice! Best of luck with your launch.Author Pet Corner!
Rest in Peace sweet Deacon.
My sidekick was Deacon. He’s no longer with us, but he was my rock for sixteen years.
He had a wild exuberance about him. He could be fiercely protective of me but then play like a puppy for hours. He and I took cross-country road trips in my little stick-shift Mini Cooper. He loved snow and the beach and getting up to trouble.
Deacon comforted me through heartbreak, love, failure, accomplishment, and the birth of my son. The most diehard friend I could’ve imagined.
Author of The Department — Jacqueline Faber
Jacqueline Faber holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory University and has taught at New York University.
Her work explores questions about memory, loss, language, and desire.
Steeped in philosophical, psychological, and literary themes, her writing is grounded in studies of character.
She lives with her family in Los Angeles. The Department is her debut novel.
Connect with Jacqueline online at jacquelinefaber.com
To learn more about Jacqueline, click any of the following links: X, Instagram, & Substack.
Elena Hartwell/Elena Taylor
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