The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Schaitkin, Alexis. Elsewhere. Celadon Books, 2022.

Alexis Schaitkin’s first-person narrative, Elsewhere, follows the life of Vera as she comes of age and has a child in an isolated, mountain town. At the outset of the novel, when Vera was still an upper, a stranger visited the town. She was shocked that the woman did not look menacing, as she was taught to fear strangers. Vera was delighted when the stranger visited the Ready Rapid Photo, as it gave her more opportunities to talk with Ruth. The narrator and the townspeople lavished gifts upon their visitor and attempted to garner her favor. On a morning when a mother went, the townspeople gathered on the family’s front lawn; the mothers removed the woman’s belongings and the fathers rooted out photographs of the mother to burn. Vera was glad to see Ruth at the gathering but could sense the stranger’s disdain for the town’s custom. The narrator assumed that Ruth could never understand the beauty of the affliction and resented her judgement. Shortly after, Vera discovered that Ruth was sleeping with her father. She ensured that the entire town knew of the stranger’s indiscretion and spurned her for interloping in their idyllic lives. Ruth dropped off a roll of film for development at the Ready Rapid and told Vera that she could leave the town, if she wanted to. The following day, the townspeople gathered outside of the Alpina and forced Ruth to the bank of the Graubach. Vera rebuffed the woman’s pleas and pushed her into the rapids.

In Part II, after Vera had her child, Iris, she worried that she would be an insufficient mother. At the weekly new mothers’ gatherings, in the park, she and the other women shared advise. They were careful not to mention their shortcomings or fears as not to cause reason for their own disappearance. After Iris’s birthday party, Vera noticed that her image was smudged in a family photo from that day. She feared that the double image was an omen that her disappearance was imminent. Over the following days she continued to see signs that pointed at her failures as a mother and feared that she would disappear like the mothers before her. One evening, when Vera could not feel her corporeal body and sensed her impending vanishing, she snuck out of the house and fled the town. She took with her only a change of clothing and a photograph of elsewhere that Ruth had taken.

When Vera arrived in the city, in Part III, she was disturbed by the bustling strangers. She stayed in a shabby hotel by the canal for several day but left after being assaulted by a stranger. After riding the train for days, she deboarded in a seaside town. A group of teenage girls mistook Vera as their peer and invited her to join them at a job fair. She secured a position at a local hotel and began lodging at Miss Ben’s boarding house. The narrator stayed by the coast for several seasons, and looked forward to the summers when Gabi, a girl about Iris’s age, would visit. The summer Gabi did not return, Vera knew that she needed to move on. On a trip into the city, Vera recognized a terrace from the photograph Ruth had taken. She made her way to the connecting apartment and was surprised to discover that Mr. Phillips, the town’s supply man, lived there. He warned her not to return to the town, though he insinuated that Iris was in danger.

Vera wended her way back to the town in Part IV. She was disturbed that her peers and friends did not recognize her and treated her as a stranger. Vera visited Peter at his dentist’s office, under the guise of a toothache, and longed for him to recognize her teeth and realize that she was his wife. The narrator was also devastated that her daughter saw her as a stranger. Over the following days she befriended her old community and began sleeping with Peter again. However, after she expressed disdain for Teresa’s disappearance, the community shunned her. Vera gave Ruth a photograph of the coast before she once again ran from her daughter and the town. In Part V, Vera realized that Ruth was her mother, who had returned to the town to save her from the affliction. She moved back to the coast in hopes that Iris would one day search for her and find her waiting.