Vanishing Shoals

Vanishing Shoals: A Memoir

Romero’s writing perfectly captures the endless ebb and flow between grief and salvation.

Samantha Otto Brown, author of SUB WIFE: A MEMOIR FROM THE HOMEFRONT

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Vanishing Shoals is a micro-memoir written during a year-long cancer journey. It is not a cancer memoir because life is not made of a singular event. With alternating timelines, Sita explores formative experiences in an ashram, with her parents’ battles of addiction and mental illness, and the contrast between spiritual involvement and parental neglect. In the present, it starts with a rare cancer diagnosis and becomes a reconnection to spirituality, radical acceptance, and unconditional familial nurturing.

Sita’s book asks the question—how do we move beyond a history we’d rather hide? And how do we learn to appreciate experiences of the past as part of being a whole and flawed human?

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Advance Praise for Vanishing Shoals

"In Vanishing Shoals, Sita Romero takes the reader with her on a journey—not just of a cancer diagnosis and treatment, but of youth and grit, parenthood and divorce, hardship and friendship, and the lessons in all of it, the graces and gifts. Romero reminds us that it’s the people who truly love us that keep us afloat and who will save us until we know how to save ourselves. Vanishing Shoals is a journey of fear and doubt, hope and spirit. Romero doesn’t offer pat answers or easy endings, just as life doesn’t: we humans—at our best—take one step and then another, understanding the risks, willing ourselves to go out into life’s depths and move forward through it anyway. Romero does just that."
Shuly Xóchitl Cawood
Author of THE GOING AND GOODBYE: A MEMOIR
"Romero’s writing perfectly captures the endless ebb and flow between grief and salvation. As a narrator, Romero expertly drops readers into the moment of devastation—a cancer diagnosis—then rewinds the clock to her childhood where we meet a girl gaining familiarity with loss, sickness, and the quivering thread that tethers us to mortality. Vanishing Shoals is the story of a hard-won victory, the struggles that predated, and the after-fight that never truly ends."
Samantha Otto Brown
Author of SUB WIFE: A MEMOIR FROM THE HOMEFRONT
"A wonderful book, beautifully written. Switching from the past to the present, the author creates beauty out of disaster. Readers will find much to relate to in this memoir of a difficult and confusing childhood, and the way it impacts the journey to healing from a terrifying cancer diagnosis. I look forward to more from this author."
Gabi Coatsworth
Author of LOVE'S JOURNEY HOME