A mind, walking.

Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New Zealand, abruptly leaving a stable but unfulfilling life in Manhattan behind. She hitchhikes alone, is swept into the lives of strangers, and sleeps in fields, forests, and public parks — testing fate, and testing herself.

Haunted by her sister's death and consumed by an inner violence she conceals so well that no one she meets senses anything wrong, Elyria is drawn toward a harder question: if her truest self is invisible and unknowable to everyone around her, is she even alive?

The opera stays inside her monologue for its full length: there is no scene change to another character's point of view, no flashback rendered as spectacle. What the audience receives instead is the texture of a mind circling — departure, arrival, doubt, repeated in slightly different shapes across seventeen short movements, in a libretto adapted by the composer from the novel.

The score is divided into 17 movements grouped into 3 parts. Other works may be performed between parts.

Nobody Is Ever Missing was originally conceived to premiere alongside an interstitial work by Tim Holt for SATB vocal quartet, titled Anchorites, which anticipates and reflects on themes and images from the opera in performance. Other relevant music can also be effectively paired on a program — three examples used in past presentations follow.