In 1986, fifteen-year-old Mamie Blackhead witnesses a plane explode above her small Tennessee town. From the wreckage, she discovers a neon green knapsack tangled in a tree. Inside is the journal belonging to a mysterious boy—one who may have perished in the crash.

Thirty-five years later, Mamie returns home to settle her parents’ estate and face the ghosts she’s buried—her fractured marriage, her father’s death, and the secret she swore never to tell. When her daughter discovers the knapsack, the truth Mamie has spent decades hiding threatens to destroy what’s left of her family.

A darkly funny, emotionally charged story about guilt, memory, and redemption, Life in a Neon Knapsack closes The Trilogy of Life with a brilliant, bittersweet punch: the things we carry never really stay buried.