On the evening before Thanksgiving break, Sunny finds herself in the classroom of a teacher every girl knows better than to be alone with. With the pressure of his palm seared into her thigh, she slams through the school doors into the autumn cold and flees to the relative safety of her broken home, setting off a chain of events that upends her life. With every emotional wound unraveling inside her, Sunny fixates on her estranged drug-addicted mother and forms a plan with her unshakeable best friend, Gracie, to track her down. A quest for answers, for healing, for love, How You Come Back navigates the darkness of trauma, and the flickering hope that can find the way forward.

Chelsea Laine Wells is a creative writing teacher and managing editor of Hypertext Magazine, living in Dallas, TX. Her work has been published in Pithead Chapel, PANK, New South, Split Lip, and many others. A limited-edition book containing her work was released by Lark Sparrow Press in 2016. Eleven of her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, with "The Contents of Her Stomach" featuring in Best of the Net 2015. How You Come Back is her first novel.

"In this masterful debut novel, Chelsea Lane Wells deftly unearths the fraught internal landscape of adolescence in glorious and compassionate detail.... By the end of the first chapter, I'd fallen in love. By the last chapter, I would fight and die for these characters." — Christine Rice, Author of Swarm Theory

"A story about how the world teaches a girl to be afraid, but she can also learn how to feel safe? Good god, this book was made for me." — Lindsay Hunter, Author of Hot Springs Drive

"Chelsea Laine Wells methodically pours Pop Rocks into the open wounds inflicted by familial trauma, sexual turmoil, and crushing addiction, allowing brave readers to experience its fizzy combustion as it coalesces into a deep, poetic reservoir of hurt, longing, and ultimately, survival." — Brian Alan Ellis, Author of Hobbies You Enjoy