The Other Side of Nothing

A moving exploration of family, friendship, and how far we are willing to go for the ones we love, The Other Side of Nothing is a powerful read about loss, self-determination, and second chances.

2024 IPPY Awards Gold Medalist for Popular Fiction
2024 Zibby Summer Reads Selection

The day after her eighteenth birthday, Julia Reeves checks herself into a psychiatric facility, longing to find a way out of the grief and guilt that have engulfed her since her father’s untimely death. What she finds is fellow suicide attempt survivor Sam Lorenzo, a brilliant twenty-three-year-old photographer. Sam brings beauty and light back into Julia’s life, so when he asks her to escape with him on a cross-country odyssey, she agrees.

Before Julia can process what she’s done, the two young lovers are on the run.

When Julia’s mother, Laura, learns Julia has disappeared and authorities will do nothing to help find her, Laura forms an uneasy alliance with the sole person who has as much to lose as she does: Sam’s mother, Arabella. Armed with only a handful of clues, the two mothers embark on a journey of their own, desperately hoping to save their children before they are lost forever.

Anastasia Zadeik is a writer, editor, and storyteller. After graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a BA in psychology from Smith College, she had an international career in neuropsychological research while raising her children. She now serves as Director of Operations for the San Diego Writers Festival, as a coproducer of the San Diego Memoir Showcase, and as a mentor and board member for the literary nonprofit So Say We All. She also sits on the board of the International Memoir Writers Association.

A frequent performer of narrative non-fiction in a hushed bar or on a stage, her work has appeared in the San Diego Decameron Project, LitHub, writeordietribe.com, and the award-winning anthology Shaking the Tree: Short. Brazen. Memoir. Her debut novel, Blurred Fates (She Writes Press, August 2022), won the 2023 Sarton Award for Contemporary Fiction and the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award for Contemporary Fiction. She lives in San Diego with her husband and their empty-nest rescue dog, Charlie.