Disappeared Dad / Literature

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• Absolutely Truly: Lucas Winthrop's father died some time ago, turning his mom into an overprotective one.
• In Afrotistic, Samuel O'Brian is an autistic teenager whose dad abandoned him and his sisters because he felt overwhelmed by Samuel's needs.
• Matt's father died in an accident on the Aurora in Airborn, which is why Matt must work at 15 to support the mothers and sisters.
• The Alice Network: The birth father of Charlie's baby isn't involved, due to her having no idea who he is. Finn however becomes the adopted father of her son.
• Almost Perfect: Logan's dad left the state when he was four. They never saw each other again. Logan's mom doesn't even have any pictures of his dad, so the only way he can find out what he looked like is from the Class of 1986 picture at high school.
• American Girls Collection:
  • Caroline Abbott's father is separated from her as a prisoner of war during the War of 1812.
  • In the Kit series, Stirling Howard's father abandons Sterling and his mother when he can no longer support his family due to financial losses in The Great Depression. In the movie adaptation of the books, Kit's father is the one who leaves the family to try to find work in Chicago, albeit temporarily, unlike Mr. Howard.
  • Molly's father is absent for most of the series since he is serving as a doctor for troops in England during World War II. The whole family misses him immensely. He leaves a Christmas message for the family in Molly's Surprise and officially returns home at the end of Changes for Molly.
• Ana on the Edge: Ana's dad moved to Hawaii when she was a baby. He used to call every Sunday night, but the phone calls became less frequent, and now she hasn't heard from him in years. The last thing he sent her was a charm necklace that says "life" in Hebrew for her eighth birthday.
• And Then I Turned Into a Mermaid: The four older Seabrook sisters' dad left after Molly was born, leaving Myla the only one old enough to really remember him. Five-year-old Minnie is the daughter of a different man, who is also out of the picture.
• Animorphs:
  • Rachel's father is divorced, and his first appearance in the series is purely to say he's moving far, far away.
  • And then we have Tobias, although Elfangor's disappearance was special circumstances.
• In Armada, Zack's father Xavier died in an explosion when he was less than an year old. Later, he turns out to have faked his death in order to help EDA.
• The Artemis Fowl series begins with Artemis Sr. missing and presumed dead, though his son is determined to find him. He succeeds by the end of the second book.
• Half-siblings Leo and Tia in The Art of Being Normal both have absentee fathers. Leo's father Jimmy left when he was a baby while Tia's father Tony is in jail for selling stolen goods. Part of the story revolves around Leo finding his father.
• In Seanan McGuire's October Daye novel Ashes of Honor, Etienne reveals he has a daughter whose mother never told him about her, until she calls him up one day and furiously accuses him of kidnapping her.
• Isaac Asimov's "It's Such a Beautiful Day": The question of why Mr Hanshaw doesn't appear in the story is answered early in the story by Mrs Hanshaw glancing at a cubograph of her dead husband. Context suggests it is a sci-fi photograph next to her bed.
• The Baby-Sitters Club:
  • Kristy's father, Patrick Thomas, abandoned his wife and four children and almost never calls or writes.
  • Abby and Anna's father died in a car crash.
• Bambi: As is normal with roe deer, the fathers are not present in their children's lives. Even Bambi abandons his mate and children by the end.
• In Black Unicorn, Tanaquil doesn't know anything about her father, only that her mother had renounced him and she inherited her skills with repairing objects from him. When she realizes Lizra's father Zorander is her father, she's nothing but disappointed, as he's cold and heartless. Lizra can't blame her.
  "You'd just be another unnecessary daughter."
• Ben Safford Mysteries: In Epitaph for a Lobbyist, Shirley Knapp's ex-husband hasn't had any role in his kids' lives since Shirley left him while pregnant with their younger child. He mentions that he didn't even know whether the younger child was a boy or a girl until over a decade later. He does seem to regret his absence and has some Papa Wolf moments when he thinks his daughter is in danger.
• Blaze's father in Blaze (or Love in the Time of Supervillains) left the family to pursue his acting career in New York. Blaze is convinced that he'll eventually find success and come back for them.
• Born Behind Bars: Kabir's appa used to visit him and his amma in jail and put money in their jail bank account. Then he moved to Dubai, where he said his new job would allow him to hire a good lawyer to get his family out of jail. But one day he stopped writing, and no one knows why. Turns out he died in a plane crash on the way to tell his parents in Bengaluru about his Maligned Mixed Marriage.
• Both Can Be True: Daniel's dad moved out in August. He was supposed to visit the family on weekends, but mostly hasn't. The official reason he left was so his commute would be shorter, but Daniel and his identical twin Mitch know it's really a trial separation.
• In A Boy Made of Blocks, Alex meets Isobel, a woman whose autistic son Jamie is about Sam's age. She tells him that her husband left her before her son was diagnosed.
• Bravelands: Fearless' father Titan is murdered by a group of rival lions early on.
• In Bridge of Clay Michael Dunbar is brought up by his mother after his father, a firefighter, was killed in a bush fire. Later on, he abandons his five sons.
• The Brotherhood of the Conch: When Anand was ten, his father moved to Dubai in order to take a high-paying job and send payments back to the family. But a few months later, the payments stopped, and the family has been living in poverty ever since. No one knows what happened to him. He was framed for embezzlement, jailed, and not allowed to send letters. He is finally released and returns to Kolkata only a few days after Anand leaves with Abhaydatta and Nisha.
• The Brothers Lionheart: No mention is ever made of the boys' father in the movie. In the book he's said to have gone to sea, and presumably he died there.
• In A Brother's Price, Jerin and Ren have this in common, both having deceased fathers. Jerin's died of an accident a few months before the start of the book, resulting in Jerin's Promotion to Parent to his younger siblings. Ren thought her father had died of illness, but when Jerin, now betrothed to Ren and her sisters, is moved into the palace's husband quarters, he finds evidence that his predecessor, Keifer, was involved in killing the princesses' father with poison.
• Bruce Coville's Book of...:
  • Bruce Coville's Book of Magic: The protagonist's father in Phoenix Farm, who ran off a week before the events of the story because he couldn't find work. He comes back in the end when he's finally got a new job and has found where his wife and kids moved to after the fire that destroyed their home at the start of the story.
  • Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares II: In The Dollhouse, narrator Lina notes that her dad abandoned the family when her sister Charlie was just a baby.
• Erika, Grünlich's daughter, suffers from this in Buddenbrooks.
• In Captain Underpants, Harold's parents are divorced. The father is only mentioned at all in the Backstory given in the ninth book, implying that Harold never visits him.
• This is apparently the standard in Cat Pack. Texas Jake never mentions his father and Carlotta's kittens are fatherless (with all of the club wanting to be their step-father).
• The Cat Who... Series: Qwill's father Dana Qwilleran, whom Qwill never met because he was shot while trying to rob a bank out of desperation. It's not until book 22 (The Cat Who Robbed a Bank) that Qwill even learns his name through letters his mother sent to Francesca Klingenschoen, and is rather furious when he discovers the truth about the man's fate.
• Cheaper by the Dozen ends with Frank Gilbreth Senior dying of a heart attack while on the phone with his wife Lillian. The sequel, Belles on Their Toes, focuses on Lillian and her children coping with the loss.
• Cathy Cassidy absolutely loves this trope, with it featuring in almost every book she writes:
  • In the Chocolate Box Girls series, Honey, Skye, Summer and Coco's father, Greg, has left them for a new life in Australia. Later it's revealed that they have a half-brother as well, Jake, who also has no relationship with Greg.
  • In Indigo Blue, Indie's father is well out of her life, as is her little sister's dad.
  • The Lost And Found series has a number: Phoenix's father is barely in her life, Sami's father (one of the only positively portrayed dads in the series) is dead, Marley and Dylan's abusive father is in jail with a restraining order against him, Lexie's father doesn't even know she exists, Romy's dad ran out on the family and even before she was in foster care, and Bex had a stepfather, implying this trope.
• Catwoman: Soulstealer: Selina and her sister Maggie have different fathers. Neither knows them, not even their names. Selina has never even met hers, while Maggie's left when she was very young.
• The Change Room: Eliza's father died when she was twelve in a car accident while driving during a snowstorm. She's been paranoid about driving in snowstorms ever since, and seeing how her mother struggled following this set herself on having her own business.
• In The Chronicles of Amber, the absence and possible death of Corwin's father, King Oberon, drives much of the action. Turns out he's not so disappeared after all, but concealing his identity. Mind you he really was captured and imprisoned in the Courts of Chaos; it was his escape and return he concealed.
• Clade: Noah's father is out of the picture by the time he's seven. All his mother will say about him is that he's "gone."
• Counting to D: Sam's dad, Randolph Wilson, is a painter so famous he's in Sam's art history textbook, in the chapter on modern impressionists. He also has dyslexia and ADD, like she does. Instead of taking Ritalin, he self-medicated with vodka, leading to many drunken arguments with his wife. After Sam was diagnosed with dyslexia at age seven, her dad decided she would be better off without a drunk like him and moved to New Mexico to paint the desert. She still has a picture he painted of her on the beach at age four.
• The Crimson Shadow: Siobhan's elven father abandoned her mother (a human) before she was born as he couldn't bear to see them both die before him of old age.
• The Dark-Thirty, a collection of African-American ghost stories: A boy with psychic powers has an irresponsible, semi-Affably Evil disappeared dad (mom despises him but when he's around it's usually a fun time). Dad takes his son back to the city when he learns about the boy's powers and uses him to make money on horse races, but when the kid's power disappears and he's beaten by his debt collectors he promptly returns the boy to his mother, never to be seen again ("And good riddance", says his mom).
• In The Diamond Girls, all the girls' fathers are uninvolved in their lives for one reason or another (they're sisters who all have different dads); Martine's father left when she was a baby because he couldn't cope with being a teen dad and now lives in Australia, their mother Sue left Jude's father for being abusive and he was in prison the last they heard, and Rochelle's father died of a drug overdose. Downplayed with Dixie’s father, who is in contact with her but very rarely comes to see her (as he was already married with kids when he had a fling with Sue). In the end, he promises he will be more involved with Dixie's life, though it's unknown if he keeps his promise. Sue only had a brief fling with the father of her unborn baby Sundance, with it being speculated it was a one-night stand (none of her daughters ever met him).
• Discworld:
  • Sourcery has it in a really twisted, really weird form.
  • A more conventional version in Sam Vimes's backstory. His mother always told him that his dad was run over by a cart, Vimes's own theory is that this was a brewer's cart, and it ran him over a bit at a time for years. This is part of the reason he's so determined to be a good father to Young Sam.
• Doc Savage's father leaves him in the care of teachers while he travels around the world big game hunting and searching for lost treasure until Doc becomes a man. Then he dies of the plague.
• In Dragon Lance, Kitiara Uth Matar's father, a Solamnic Knight, leaves the family when she was seven years old. She later sets out to find him, never managing to do so, but becoming a mercenary and adventurer on her journey.
• In Sarah A. Hoyt's Draw One in the Dark, Tom's father threw him out of the house at gunpoint when he found he turned into a dragon. (His mother had already left.)
• In Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novel Summer Knight, Harry is offered a chance at this: the Winter Lady offers him the information if he will only sleep with one of her court and ignore the ensuing pregnancy. He rejects it. Strongly.
  • In Blood Rites, Harry presupposes this after Emma's death, when he laments that her children are orphans. Jake reveals that, in fact, she had not wanted to settle down with him, but he will raise their children.
  • And then in Changes, Harry finds out that he is the Disappeared Dad to the daughter nobody told him about. He is understandably furious with her mother but Susan had her reasons.
• Ella Enchanted, being a literal Cinderella story, places Ella's father as a frequently-traveling merchant. He also has little to no interest in what goes on around his house in his absence.
• Ellen and Otis: Otis Spofford's mom takes care of him and runs the dance school, but his father John Spofford never appears in either book, and his name is only known by virtue of the first book referring to Otis's mother as "Mrs. John Spofford" briefly.
• Elliott & Win:
  • Win's dad was a guy named Michael X. Kelly. After Win was born, Michael became a truck driver who was away from home a lot, causing him and his wife to drift apart. Now he lives in San Diego with his new family. Win hasn't seen him in seven years. He got a letter from his dad four years ago, promising to take him to the zoo and the beach, but nothing ever came of that.
  • Donny is the product of their mom's second marriage to Bobby Don Willett, who also has a new wife (his third) and a family.
  • Paul's dad lives in Dallas. His mom says that he's a terrible man, although she won't specify what he did, and made him promise to stay out of Paul's life. She is dismayed when Paul's dad invites him to visit him in Dallas, and Paul insists on accepting. He's not really a bad guy, just gay. Paul swears off all contact with him upon finding out.
  • After Heather is raped, her mother makes her father move out on the grounds that he's male and an oppressor.
• The Elminster Series: Elminster fathers lots of children by his different women, but is mostly absent in their lives. Some, like Nastra, he had to leave for their own safety, but they later meet and team up. Since he's constantly off on various adventures however there is little chance of much relationship.
• The Empirium Trilogy: Eliana and Remy's father, Ioseph, went to war one day and never returned. It's assumed that he died in battle.
• In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Oskar's grandfather abandoned his father before he was born. He tries to apologize and explain in letters entitled "Why I'm Not Where You Are," but only one ever gets sent.
• Madeline from Everything, Everything lost her dad in a truck accident that took her brother too.
• Family Skeleton Mysteries: Madison's father Reggie, who responded to the news that Georgia was pregnant by going out and cheating on her. When she found out and he admitted it, she dumped him.
• Final Fantasy VII The Kids Are Alright A Turks Side Story: Evan's dad died fighting in the war with Wutai, although his mom refuses to go in to detail. His real father was President Shinra, who had no part in his bastard son's life.
• First Light: An aspect of their community. Children are raised by their mothers and never know their fathers. Thea eventually finds hers, however.
• Forbidden: The Whitely’s father moved to Australia with his new wife five years ago.
• In the Karen Traviss-penned Gears of War expanded universe novels, Anya Stroud was raised by her single mother Helena. Helena refused to tell Anya who her father was (or if he was even still alive) before her death, and Anya is understandably a little bitter about it.
• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld: Sybel's great-grandfather never realized he'd fathered a child, as it's said he had only slept with her great-grandmother once. Her paternal grandfather therefore grew up without ever knowing him.
• The Glass Menagerie: Mr. Wingfield abandoned his family before the events of the play take place.
• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Gods of Mars, John Carter meets a young man whose father died before he was born. Three guesses as to who his father was and whether that info was accurate.
  "With drawn swords they made for me, but before I went down beneath them they had tasted of the steel of my father's sword, and I had given such an account of myself as I know would have pleased my sire had he lived to witness it."
  "Your father is dead?" I asked.
  "He died before the shell broke to let me step out into a world that has been very good to me. But for the sorrow that I had never the honour to know my father, I have been very happy. My only sorrow now is that my mother must mourn me as she has for ten long years mourned my father."
• Good in Bed features two examples. Cannie's father walked out on his family while she was young, and is later discovered to be a plastic surgeon in Hollywood, who refuses to face up and give her answers when she confronts him. There's also Bruce, the biological father of her child from Sex for Solace, who continues to keep his distance from Cannie, even after getting this news.
• In The Halfblood Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton:
  • The Elvenbane: The titular character's foster mother is a single parent.
  • Elvenblood: The sympathetic elf lord's father disappeared when he was a child.
• In The Hampdenshire Wonder, the titular Child Prodigy's father walks out shortly after his second birthday because he's sick of living with a Creepy Child. He and Victor never see each other again.
• The Handmaid's Tale: Offred talks about her radical feminist mother at length, with no mention of her father.
• Specific cases in Harry Potter, where if you're not missing one or both parents you will be soon enough (unless you're a Weasley. Lucky them).
  • James Potter died when trying to make a Last Stand to Voldemort to save his wife Lily and baby Harry.
  • Frank Longbottom is alive, but can't really BE a father since he was driven insane by the Cruciatus Curse. The same is the case with his wife Alice, thus Neville was raised by Frank's mother.
  • Dean Thomas' father, as revealed by Word of God, is a wizard who left his Muggle wife and unborn child because he feared they would be targeted by the Death Eaters. He was later killed, and his family never learned the truth. This would have shown up in the text, but got dropped in favor of Neville's story.
  • The first few books suggest Tom Riddle senior abandoned his wife and child because he didn't like magic. The sixth book revealed the much more sympathetic truth — he fled from his captor Merope after she took him off the Love Potion she'd been feeding him. She thought after all this time and with a baby on the way he'd feel the real thing or stay in the forced relationship. He didn't, and Merope later went the Death by Childbirth way. This led to Self-Made Orphan years later...
  • The Dumbledore family lost their father after he went to Azkaban prison for attacking some Muggle boys who attacked his daughter.
  • And of course in book seven BOTH of Teddy Lupin's parents are killed in the Battle of Hogwarts when he was only a few months old. He at least gets to be raised by his grandmother, and is practically a surrogate son to his godfather Harry.
  • Lucius Malfoy becomes this in the sixth book because he's sitting in Azkaban and it's the motivation for Draco to become a Death Eater, try to kill Dumbledore, and to get the Death Eaters into Hogwarts.
• In Haze, Madeline's abusive mother won't tell her who her father is. Madeline wonders if her mother hid her existence from her father in order to further isolate her.
• A Hole in the Fence: Grisón and Prune's father was killed in an earthquake when they were about two years old.
• Household Gods: Nicole's ex-husband Frank is a deadbeat who's habitually late with child support payments and often doesn't use his time with their kids at all. Once she's sent into the past, he's forced to care for them full time, and is quite unhappy with it.
• In The House of Night, Zoey's biological father left when she was two years old.
• In How to Fly with Broken Wings, Willem lives with his gran. It's never explained what happened to his father.
• This happened to two of the main characters in The Hunger Games, as Katniss and Gale's fathers were killed in the same mine explosion when they were eleven and thirteen, respectively.
  • Also, Finnick dies in the last book before Annie gives birth to their son.
• Nora's father was murdered shortly before Hush, Hush begins.
• John Cleaver's father in I Am Not a Serial Killer is absent from the book except when he sends John a letter and an iPod at Christmas.
• I Am Number Four: Sam's, and John's to an extent - but he claims Henri as his father.
• In If I Fall, If I Die, Will Cardiel's father Arthur is a successful architect who lives in the Netherlands with his new family. He and Will have talked on the phone a few times, but they had nothing to say to each other.
• I, Jedi: Corran reflects on his father Hal, who died years back, often during the book largely because he begins his Jedi training and inherited Force sensitivity from his paternal line. After learning about how Luke lost his own father in the moment he'd regained him, Corran feels deep sympathy for him, knowing it's far worse than his experience, since at least he had many years with him and lots of happy memories.
• I'm Ok (2018): Ok's dad died before the story begins. He was working on a roof when he slipped, fell off, and broke his neck.
• The In Death series: A number of characters throughout the series are much more likely to have a mother in the picture than a father. Does Nora Roberts have a problem with fathers?
• In Two Worlds: Anthony's best friend David's father left when he was four because he couldn't handle raising an autistic son.
• The Inheritance Games:
  • Avery's father is a drunk whose last location at the beginning of the book was in a seedy motel somewhere. He left raising Avery to her older sister and wasn't a part of her life... until she inherits a lot of money and he suddenly wants to become her guardian again.
  • The fathers of Nash, Grayson, Jameson and Xander are not present in their lives. Their mother didn't tell any of their fathers she was pregnant, but she points out that with the media attention their family gets, they should be able to figure it out. She's right when it comes to Grayson's father. He knew all along Grayson was his son, but just didn't want anything to do with him.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries: Cassie from Killing Cupid reveals that her father, an actor, abandoned her mother while she was pregnant with Cassie.
• Ian Fleming's James Bond in You Only Live Twice fathered a son with Kissy Suzuki (the only one of his many lovers within the books whom he impregnated). Initially the son was unnamed, only briefly mentioned, with Bond unaware of him. Then the sequel novel Blast From The Past in 1997, written by Raymond Benson, which reveals he became aware of his son years later (who'd been named James Suzuki). However they had little contact, with Bond not having a role in James' life aside from his paying child support and for his son to attend a university. Nonetheless, later in the very same story he avenges James' murder by killing Irma Bunt, his murderer.
• In L. M. Montgomery's Jane of Lantern Hill, Jane believes her mother a widow for many years before learning her parents were separated.
• In Jessica's Ghost, it's mentioned that Francis' father died in a paragliding accident, but it's never explained what happened to Andi's or Roland's fathers.
• Joel Suzuki has barely seen his father since his parents divorced when he was ten and he, his mom, and his little sister moved from Hawai'i to Seattle.
• In "Joey: A 'Mechanical Boy'," Joey's father is sent overseas when Joey is eighteen months old, after which he and his mother move in with her parents.
• Any books based on the life of Julius Caesar will include this trope, as he had to leave his daughter Julia behind when he was off being a badass in Spain and Gaul. Actually subverted in Conn Iggulden's Emperor series where Julia goes through a phase of teenage anger and resentment towards him, but otherwise pretty much worships her father. This is attributed to her growing up hearing the stories about her father's accomplishments but never seeing him do things like hurt his slaves, get himself drunk or punishing his soldiers. She even goes so far as to helping her father in the civil war, despite the fact that it means betraying her own husband, who is Caesar's opponent. Caesar's father also died when he was 16, leaving him head of the family.
• Just Juliet: Georgina's daughter's father was neglectful of her in the past, but has started getting more active in her life, to her relief.
• A lot of characters in Erich Kästner's books miss one or both parents, and since in the cases where the father is missing the relationship between the child and his or her mother is played up, which resembled Kästner's extremely close relationship to his mother, some critics tended to focus on that to the exclusion of the missing mothers. Note that at the time Kästner wrote his books — after World War I (and the Spanish Influenza) and after World War II — it was not that uncommon for children to be missing one or both parents.
  • In Emil and the Detectives, Emil Tischbein lives in a two-person household with his mother. The sequel "Emil and the Three Twins" indicates that this will change soon when Mrs. Tischbein will marry Oberwachtmeister Jeschke.
  • As does Anton Gast in Pünktchen und Anton.
  • In The Flying Classroom, Johnny Trotz was callously abandoned by both parents before becoming the ward of a sea-captain.
  • In Drei Männer im Schnee (which among other things became the basis of the 1938 movie Paradise for Three), Hildegard, the female half of the romantic couple has no mother, Fritz, the male half, has no father.
  • In Das doppelte Lottchen, Lotte and Luise discover that they are living with the respective parent that the other one is missing.
• Stephen King has written many examples (his father left his family when King was two):
  • Eddie Dean in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. He finds the Mid-World expression "forgotten the face of my father" ironic, because he wouldn't recognize his father if he met him. When he introduces himself as "Eddie Dean of New York, son of Wendell" in Calla, he thinks that leastwise, his mother always said that.
  • Ben Hanscom and Eddie Kapsbrak in IT.
  • Bobby Garfield in Hearts in Atlantis. His father died of heart attack when Bobby was three.
  • Carrie White in Carrie. Her father died in an accident before she was born.
  • Louis Creed in Pet Sematary. His father died when he was three.
  • Hal Shelburn in The Monkey (short story in the collection Skeleton Crew). His father was a seaman who left his family, like King's.
• In Der kleine Mann and its sequel, Der kleine Mann und die kleine Miss, Mäxchen Pichelsteiner, having lost both his parents in a tragic accident, is raised on his own by the stage magician Jokus von Pokus. Eventually he gains a new mother in the shape of Rosa Marzipan, Jokus' lover and later wife.
• The Last Song: Ronnie and Jonah's parents have been divorced for 3 years at the start of the story (supposedly due to infidelity on their father's part) and they live with their mother; Ronnie has taken it hard to the point where she stopped playing the piano. The two siblings then go to visit their father for the summer, kicking off the plot.
• In Leyla: The Black Tulip, the protagonist's father Aslan was an artist that disappeared during the war in the Caucasus (implied to be one of the Russian campaigns to conquer the region), since he was trying to record the conflict in his paintings. His disappearence leaves his family destitute and with no means of supporting themselves, forcing the main character to sell herself into slavery to save them and ending up in the Ottoman imperial harem.
• The Light Jar: When Nate was six, his dad left his mum and moved to New York City to be with his American girlfriend Carrie. Nate hasn't seen much of him since then.
• George from Like a Fish Understands a Tree is the product of a teen pregnancy. His mother raised him by herself until his stepdad Adam entered the picture.
• In Anna Dewdney's Llama Llama picture books and the Animated Adaptation, Llama Llama has a warm and loving relationship with his Mama Llama, which is good, because a Papa Llama is never seen. It's never explained why he lives with only Mama.
• Frances Hodgson Burnett seemed to love this trope as this happens to pretty much all of her main characters. In A Little Princess, Sara Crewe at least used to have a loving father, but both of Mary's parents in The Secret Garden are emotionally and largely physically absent even before they die. Then we have Little Lord Fauntleroy Cedric, whose loving father died when he was a toddler, and the plot is kickstarted when he and his mom go to England to meet his grandfather... This may have been due to Burnett losing her own father early on (she was just three when he died of a stroke, leaving her family in dire straits as she they had no other source for income at first). Burnett was taken care of by her grandmother (possible inspiration for the above) and her mother started running the family's business.
• Lost Voices: On Luce's thirteenth birthday, her father went out to sea in a fishing boat and never returned, leaving her to be raised by her abusive uncle.
• Miracle Creek: When Young and Mary moved from Seoul to Baltimore, Pak became a "wild-goose father," which normally refers to men who migrate annually between a job in one country and a family in another. Now people like him are called penguin fathers, because he couldn't afford to migrate and went four years without seeing his family.
• In Les Misérables, Fantine's boyfriend Félix Tholomyès abandoned her when their daughter Cosette was very young. Cosette doesn't remember him, and for part of the book believes that Jean Valjean is her father.
• The Lord of Bembibre: The main character's father died when Don Álvaro was a little kid, leaving him in his uncle's care.
• A Master of Djinn: Siti's father was a djinn who only paid attention to her mother long enough for their tryst and then left her pregnant. Mention of him is a sore spot, understandably, before she tells Fatma why.
• In The Mermaid in the Millpond, Bess is left an orphan after her mother dies of tuberculosis. What happened to her father is never mentioned.
• The Mermaid of Black Conch: Reggie's father, Life, wanted to have a career in the world outside the island of Black Conch. When he found out Arcadia was pregnant, he realised he'd be tied to the island forever if he stayed. Just as importantly, he would always be subordinate to Arcadia, who is one of the few white people on the island, owns most of the town of St. Constance, and lives on land that was once worked by slaves. He left by ferry during the night, leaving Arcadia to raise Reggie by herself. [[spoiler:Until he comes back over ten years later and sneaks into her house late at night. Arcadia almost shoots him before she recognises him.
• The Missing Piece of Charlie O'Reilly: Cody never knew his dad. His mom, a petty criminal, attempted to raise him as a single mother before dying in a drunk driving accident when he was six, leaving him to be raised by his grandma.
• Antonia's father dies before the events of the The Monk, leaving her to be raised in relative poverty and obscurity.
• Monster of the Month Club: Rilla's father, David Charles Pinowski, who split up from her mother before Rilla was ever born. Part of the plot of book 3 is her using the internet to try and find him, which she ultimately succeeds at, allowing him to visit for Christmas in book 4. She also learns he and Sparrow had tried to find one another, but he was in the Peace Corp at the time and never got her letters, and she'd changed her name by the time he tried to find her.
• Monster of the Year: The narration casually mentions that Michael hasn't seen his father since he was six months old.
• Moongobble and Me: In book 1, it's noted that Edward's never known his father. Book 2 reveals why, and sees them happily reunited when Edward unwittingly breaks the curse his father was under.
• The Mummy Monster Game: Josh and Amy's father walked out on them when they were younger.
• In The Mysterious Benedict Society, Kate's dad left her when she was two. It is revealed to be Milligan, who was brainswept on a mission.
• Myth Adventures: Trollian siblings Tananda and Chumley were raised by their mother, a strong-willed Trollop who is mentioned a few times in the series. They've never said a word about their father, but he's apparently not around, as their Mum always drafts Chumley to use his Trollish strength for heavy lifting whenever she redecorates her house.
• Navigating Early: Jack's father has spent the last four years fighting in World War II. After Jack's mother dies, Jack is sent to Boarding School because there's no one around to take care of him.
• Jake suffers from this in Obsidian Mirror. His attempts to find his father kick off the story though in fairness, his dad didn't intend to get Trapped in the Past.
• Clara from On the Spectrum has hardly seen her dad since her parents divorced when she was a toddler, and her dad moved to Europe to start a new life. The last time she visited him was four years ago, when she was in sixth grade.
• In Paladin of Souls, it is revealed that Roya Ias' "boon companion" Chancellor Arbol dy Lutiz had essentially abandoned his latest wife and young son to attend upon his liege at court. Young Ahrys did not even remember his father but yet strove to excel in all the arts of warfare and statesmanship in the hopes of being summoned to the capital until the day the elder Dy Lutiz died. As Ahrys' half-brother (the result of their mother's long-term affair with the Castle Warder) put it:
  "Me, I had a father for all of my life, or at least all of his. Ahrys had... a dream."
• In Penryn and the End of Days, Penryn's father left because he could no longer cope with his mentally ill wife.
• In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, most of the demigods where the god is the father have never met their father and before finding out their heritage, usually are told that their father wasn't in the picture. For example, Sally Jackson told her son Percy that his father, Poseidon, wasn't dead but had been lost in sea. This is inverted with demigods with godly mothers, of course. Interestingly, demigods with mortal mothers seem to have far more dysfunctional lives than those with mortal fathers. Virtually all mortal mothers described in the series are either dead, insane, or neglectful (the only exception is Sally Jackson).
• Pilgrennon's Children: In The Emerald Forge, Eric Cartwright mentions that his dad left him and is now in an unknown location, and his parents never really knew each other.
• Planet Earth Is Blue: Nova and Bridget's father went to fight in Vietnam before Nova was born and never returned. Their Conspiracy Theorist mama believes he was killed for knowing the truth about the government's communist plot.
• In Power, Donna and Omishto's biological father left their family for another woman, and then, supposedly, left that woman for another. Donna remembers this about him, but Omishto just remembers him as a beautiful man and as the one who named her.
• Presidential: Robert Calvin, the President's husband, died prior to the events of the book, which leaves her a widow and single mother with their son Zach.
• Tierra in Princess Holy Aura is raised by her single mother, and does not think highly of her father.
  "I have a father. Biologically. Other than that, he's an asshole."
• L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero's Daughter trilogy opens with Prospero Lost. His children still haven't found him at the end of the second book.
• Rabble Starkey: Rabble's father abandoned her mother, Sweet Ho when Rabble was about one month old.
• Ragged Dick: Dick's father went to sea and never returned. When his mother died, he was left an orphan at age three.
• In Real Mermaids Don't Sell Seashells, all we know about Dillon's dad is that he's out of the picture. This combined with his mom's Hands-Off Parenting is why it takes three days for people to start looking for him after he gets kidnapped.
• Reaper (2016): Played with. Jex's dad is certainly this by our standards, but as everyone's parents are in Game, standards are different and Jex's father is considered unusually good by calling her every week and offering to sponsor her Game membership. Until he's killed by the bombing that kicks off the plot.
• Remember Dippy: Johnny's dad has lived in Maine ever since the divorce two years ago. Johnny doesn't like visiting him because he doesn't get along with his new girlfriend Kim.
• The Reynard Cycle: Reynard's father abandoned him when he was very young (he doesn't even know his name.) Later, he came down with a bad case of Missing Mom, leading to a full blown case of Parental Abandonment.
• The children's story Rise and Shine Bunny is about a Funny Animal rabbit boy learning not to be so grumpy in the morning. His family consists of his "Mama" and three siblings, but no mention is made of their father.
• In Roadmarks, one of the subplots involves a young man searching for the truth about his absent father, the protagonist.
• The Royal Diaries features this trope almost as much as it does Missing Moms:
  • Isabel of Castille's father died when she was younger, and much of the conflict in the story is between her two brothers over who is the rightful king of Castille.
  • Marie Antoinette's father died a few years before the book begins. She notes how her mother always was mourning him.
  • The future Queen Victoria's father died when she was a baby, which means that she becomes her uncle William's heir presumptive upon his accession, since her father was the next brother in line for the throne.
  • Mary is Queen of Scotland practically from birth since her father died a week after she was born.
  • Kristina's father died after getting lost in a foreign land, making her King of Sweden at a young age. (Her father insisted she be crowned king instead of queen.)
  • A minor plot point in Kazunomiya's story is how her father is dead, which weakens her mother's position, since she was merely a concubine instead of his legal wife.
• Bo's father from Run left the family when she was young. When she finally tracks him down she finds that he started a different family.
• The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea: Noboru's father died a few years ago. He's happy that his father is dead because his philosophy dictates that fathers and teachers are the worst things in the world.
• Schooled in Magic: Emily's father departed from her life when she was very young.
• The Secret Garden: Mary might as well not have had a father for all she remembers him.
• The Secret Kingdom: Jasmine lives with her mother and grandmother, and nothing is ever mentioned about her father or his whereabouts.
• A Shadow Bright and Burning: Henrietta's father died before she was born, so she never knew him. She finds out a bit about him from an old relation of his, Jenkins Hargrove.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • Clary Fray was told by her mother, Jocelyn, that her father Jonathan was a soldier who died serving the country before she was born. The truth is far more unpleasant: her real father, Valentine Morgenstern, is still alive, but he is a supremacist who consorted with demons and attempted to depose the Shadowhunter legislature, the Clave. He also killed his parents-in-law, which was the reason why Jocelyn left him, Idris, and the whole Shadowhunter life in favor of New York.
  • Simon Lewis lost his father to a heart attack when he was a kid.
  • Jonathan Morgenstern died before his son with the Seelie Queen, Ash, was born. Ash later gets to spend time with an alternate version of his dad for five years, though.
  • Rupert Blackthorn is killed by his father-in-law while his wife is pregnant with their son, Jesse.
• The Silence of Murder: Hope's father was hit by a truck when she was three. Her older half-brother Jeremy was told that he didn't have a father. Once when he heard in church that God was his father, he ran home and asked Rita how she and God met and fell in love. It turns out his biological father is Coach Johnson, Rita's high school boyfriend, whom Jeremy is accused of murdering.
• The Silerian Trilogy: Tansen's father was killed in his childhood during a blood feud with another clan. His maternal grandfather then served as something of a father substitute for him. Unfortunately, the old man later was tortured and killed by Valdani soldiers.
• The Sixty-Eight Rooms: Jack is raised only by his mother. The lack of a father isn't a plot issue, but their lack of money is.
• Small as an Elephant: When asked where his father is, Jack says that he doesn't have one. He doesn't say why, though.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • King Robert, in direct contrast to how his dear friend Ned raised his bastard, entirely ignores the existence of fifteen of his illegitimate children and does his best to avoid Edric Storm, the sixteenth. Gendry, one of his eldest children, doesn't even know that Robert is his father. Robert isn't much better to his legitimate children, being the "psychological absence" type who wants nothing to do with them, leaving their mother Cersei to raise them. Of course, they aren't his, but neither he nor they know that.
  • When Craster dies, his newborn son by Gilly is left orphaned. And Gilly too, since she is, you know, his daughter.
• Sorry, Bro: Nareh's father died prior to the events of the book from a car accident while driving drunk. His presence still hangs over her as she misses him but also resents things he left them with, such as taking out a second mortgage on the house which her mother didn't know about.
• The Speed of Sound: When Eddie was eleven, his dad dropped him off at Harmony House and said, "Never forget I love you, and I always will." Then he drove away. Eddie never saw him again.
• The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy's father left his mother before he was born.
• In The Story of Valentine and His Brother, Richard can't bring himself to love Valentine, who looks too much like his mother. He spends most of his time in Florence and only meets Val a handful of times.
• Sunshine has Sunshine, aka Rae Seddon^note legal name, aka Raven Blaise^note birth name bemoaning her absent sorcerer father. Unusually, it isn't the man himself she resents but his family, who apart from her grandmother strictly avoided contact after the divorce. Which is now a problem because their heritage is the reason she isn't normal. Which is in turn the reason she isn't dead after the beginning of the novel, but some of the time she feels like dying at the start would have been so much less painful, and she has no mentor. Except the vampire.
• Surfacing (1972): The goal of The Protagonist in the book is to find her missing father at her childhood home.
• This is the default in Survivor Dogs. Male dogs usually don't stay with their mates, which is why dogs refer to them as "sire-dog". There are exceptions though, such as Lucky once he has pups with Sweet.
• Tailchaser's Song:
  • This is the norm amongst cats to the point where fathers are just called "sires". Tailchaser's father Brindleside ran off before his birth.
  • Roofshadow's father mysteriously disappeared, along with everyone from her clan who wasn't outright slaughtered, while she was away for the day. They're all implied to have died.
  • Prince Fencewalker's father is presumably dead. His mother is alive but the Prince Consort is explicitly not his father.
• A Tale of...:
  • In Fairest Of All: A Tale of The Wicked Queen, the titular Queen's abusive father died just before she married the King. He lives on as the man in the Mirror.
  • The King spends much of Snow White's childhood off in a war. He ends up dying in battle, which sends the Queen off the deep end in her grief.
  • Both of Maleficent's parents abandoned her in a tree as an infant.
• In the novella A Taste of Honey, Lucretian's father, said to be one of the Daluçan gods, left his mother Olivy and never figures in the kid's life, making Aqib and Lucrio both his actual father-figures.
• Tell Me How You Really Feel: Sana's father Massoud has not had much contact with her over the years, so she's cold toward him at the beginning when he comes back into her life. However, she slowly warms up to him somewhat after he makes an effort to be more there.
• Thérèse Raquin: Camille's father is nowhere in the story. His mother raises him alone. Thérèse too, because Mme. Raquin's brother disappeared as well, leaving his daughter behind.
• In the Thora series, the protagonist's human father mysterious vanished five days after marrying her mermaid mother.
• In Three Days to Never, the protagonist and his sister were raised by their grandmother after their father disappeared when they were very young. It turns out their father didn't deliberately abandon them — he was done in by the bad guys.
• The father of the main character in Esther Friesner's Tim Desmond trilogy stepped out to get a newspaper and never came back. It's revealed in the middle book that this was due to his becoming Champion of the Sidhe.
• Subverted in Time Scout. Margo grew up thinking her grandfather abandoned her mother and grandmother. Turns out she left him. And it still hurts.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's father dies in the war when he is two; he's raised by his mother and Elrond. There are more examples of disappeared dads, which tend to fall into Parental Abandonment and Parental Substitute as well (Frodo, Éowyn and Éomer, Elrond and Elros...)
  • In The Children of Húrin, the Children of Húrin, Túrin and Niënor, lose their father at a young age, which is the beginning of all their trouble — he's captured by Morgoth and released only after they've both killed themselves.
• Tortall Universe:
  • Alanna and Thom in the Song of the Lioness series have the psychologically absent version; their father has never gotten over the death of their mother and largely ignores them. At ten the two pull a Twin Switch so that Alanna can disguise herself as a boy and train to be a knight and Thom can go get mage training. Alanna's a bit worried about the training master sending her father letters about how she's doing as 'Alan' but this fear is unfounded. Her father sends one letter to the palace saying that he trusts "Thom" will continue to do well, which gives the training master pause only until Alanna alludes to Parental Neglect, something that doesn't surprise him.
  • The absence of Daine's father in The Immortals led to Daine being branded as a Heroic Bastard and earned her much ridicule, but in the last book, she and the readers find out he was actually a god.
  • The first book of the The Numair Chronicles reveals that Ozorne's father was killed in a conflict with the Sirajit people.
• Michael's dad is never mentioned in The Traitor Game, in contrast to his mum, who is an important supporting character. His absence is conspicuous enough that we can infer he's not in the picture.
• In Tranquilium, Gleb Marin's father was killed when he was 17 or so. It's played somewhat more straight with his own son Billy, who doesn't know Gleb is his father; the man he thinks is his father is missing as of early Part Three (when the son becomes a character in his own right) because he is a prisoner of war. He is mostly raised by his mother, who is Gleb's former lover and the wife of Billy's adapted father, and by Auntie Olive, who is Gleb's former wife. Things inevitably get rather awkward when Gleb has to rescue Billy from a conspiracy (the fact that Gleb was by this point a sovereign monarch didn't help)...
• Katherine from Truth or Dare (2000) has one. She brings him up while complaining to Josh about how grown-ups lie - her parents both told her their relationship was fine, up until the moment her dad walked out.
• Twelve Days: Olympia's ex-husband Raoul left three years ago because he couldn't handle Hannibal's autism. She hasn't heard from him in eighteen months. Hannibal has been told that his father is dead.
• Underground: Robyn and Lucy's dad just packed up and left one day, abandoning them and their mother and never to be seen again.
• The father of the titular character in Gregor the Overlander, vanished when he was eight. They find him though.
• Don De Lillo placed the Disappeared Dad trope at the innermost core of his monumental novel Underworld (1997). Protagonist Nick Shay believes that when he was a boy his father had been abducted and murdered by the Mob, because Italian fathers do not leave their families; they just don't. Told in backwards chronological order, the novel finally reveals that his father had secretly left in a case of Parental Abandonment after all.
• In Michael Flynn's Up Jim River, the harper was raised by her mother alone, with only some information about her father. When her mother disappears, her quest for her also has the unspoken desire to find her father.
• This seems to be the most common result of male Moroi and female Dhampir relations in Vampire Academy. The dad takes off and the mother raises the children on her own.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Tigerstar leaves his kits and their mother to join Shadowclan. There is a lot of bitterness involved as Tigerstar attempted to murder Bluestar, the leader of Thunderclan, and also murdered Redtail, the former deputy. Unsurprisingly, Thunderclan does not want his kits, Bramblekit and Tawnykit, to turn out like their father.
  • Tigerstar's own father was absent — left the Clan to be a kittypet — and this is a major part of why he's evil.
  • The lead of the original arc, Firestar, wasn't involved with his father Jake. Jake wasn't even revealed to be his father until after he first appeared.
• In We Can't Rewind, this has been a chronic problem with Denise's family: her mother's boyfriend didn't stick around to help her through her Teen Pregnancy after conceiving Denise, and Denise's molester escaped the law by going on the lam soon after he realized he'd impregnated her. This leads to some drama later, as she has difficulty explaining the concept of marriage to Jaymee when she decides to get hitched to her employer (and the book's narrator) Don.
• Welcome To Wonderland: P.T.'s father hasn't been present in his life, though as of "Sandapalooza Shake-Up", P.T. suspects Jimbo of being his father. However, Jimbo shoots that notion down in "Beach Battle Blowout" by stating that he and P.T.'s mom were just friends.
• When My Heart Joins the Thousand:
  • Alvie's father left when she was a baby because he felt like he wasn't fit to be a father. All she has left of him is a picture that was taken a few months before she was born. According to Mama, he was a Conspiracy Theorist prone to fits of rage.
  • Stanley's dad got kicked out of the house after he got drunk, forgot that Stanley had osteogenesis imperfecta, and accidentally broke his arm. After that, Stanley only saw him on holidays, and even that eventually stopped. Stanley isn't sure if his dad is afraid of hurting him again, or if he just didn't have the guts to stick around.
• Neither Miranda nor Sal from When You Reach Me have a father. Miranda even comments that because she never had a father, she doesn't feel the need for one.
• Where the Crawdads Sing: After most of Kya's family leaves when she's six, her pa sticks around for the next few years, but he's distant and neglectful, sometimes leaving for days at a time, and he abandons her for good when she's ten. She spends the rest of her childhood as a Minor Living Alone.
• In White as Snow, Draco goes off and creates a new capital city with a new queen who gives him sons and forgets Arpazia and Coira. Played with in that they don't miss him and soon leave the city themselves.
• Wicked Good: After Archer and Wayne's divorce, Wayne spent two years traveling around New England auditioning, during which time he almost completely cut off contact with Archer and Rory. Now Rory resents him and his belated efforts to bond.
  Rory: Why do I have to hang out with Dad? He ignored me for two years. I should ignore him for two years. Let him see what that feels like. He doesn't like me and I don't like him. Why can't he understand that?
• The Wicked Years:
  • Elphaba and Nessarose are actually half-sisters through their mother. Elphaba's biological father ran off after raping Melena.
  • Fiyero is an absentee father to the children he has with his wife. He's also one to his son with Elphaba, though in this case it's due to his death.
• Pretty much all of Jacqueline Wilson's teen books contain this. Parents are almost always divorced and the father has usually vanished into the ether (occasionally to be replaced with a Wicked Stepfather).
  • By the same author, The Two Princesses of Bamarre has the king (the father of the titular princesses) as a distant, negligent man. While not bad per say, he never takes action until he's spent a ridiculous amount of time consulting a book of proverbs he carts around. When his oldest daughter comes down with a deadly disease, he vows to go out and find a cure...after having a leisurely breakfast and spending several days consulting his book. He ends up not even attending his younger daughter's wedding, because he thinks the proverbs advise against it!
• Universal Monsters: Captain Bob's dad has never been mentioned throughout the series until book 6, when he mentions to Joe and Trey that "I already lost somebody I care about. I don't think I could go through that again.", which they guess refers to his dad. Captain Bob confirms it, and then one of the boys says he figured Captain Bob would tell him about his dad if he wanted, before adding that "I figured your mother and father got a divorce or something." Captain Bob's only response is "Or something," before he turns away and stares silently off into the distance.
• Alyssa from Wildflower Ranch doesn't know who her father was. She eventually finds a ring her dad gave her mom and a high school photo of her parents, but she still doesn't know what happened to their relationship. Her half-brother Ethan's dad walked out around the time he was diagnosed with autism.
• Wild Orchid: Taylor's dad moved from Saskatoon to Cody, Wyoming on her eighth birthday, which she thinks is because of her then-undiagnosed Asperger's. At first Taylor coped so badly with his absence that she was put on medication, but she eventually realized it was for the better because her parents used to fight so much. She barely heard from her father for the next few years, but when she was eleven, she started getting good grades in English and math, and he started inviting her to stay with him. Taylor resents that he only wants to be her father when she's doing well.
• The Wild Way Home: Charlie's friend Lamont's dad left last year. Lamont hardly ever talks about it.
• In The Witches of Worm, Jessica's father left shortly after Jessica was born.
• Wizard's Hall: Thornmallow's father is only mentioned once, and never seen. It's unclear if he's even alive or not.
• A Woman's Work: Queen Arrabel's husband, father of her son Danyel, is dead when the story starts. At one point in the story while looking at a mule she thinks how it reminds her of him (he was equally stubborn and stupid to judge by her comments).
• The main character of Wonder Show, Portia, is actually missing both of her parents, but more emphasis is put on her father since he's the only one she remembers well. Most of her motivation in the story comes from trying to find him or get her hands on a file containing information on him. In the end, she finds out out he died long before the main events of the story.
• A Wrinkle in Time: The disappearance of Meg Murray's father years ago becomes a central part of the plot. Working as a physicist on a top-secret project for the government, he'd accidentally teleported himself to another planet, where he was held captive. Meg and companions end up rescuing him.
• The absent father is a major plot point in You Dont Know Me. The entire premise revolves around the relationship between John and his stepfather (or the rough equivalent, anyway), so the missing father is really a necessity. The details are vague at best - though a fantasized version of the father is mentioned frequently, John has little to no recollection of who he really was, his mother rarely talks about him, and the actual disappearance was sudden and without explanation: one day there, the next day gone.
• In Zeroes, Scam's father left him and his mother when Scam was young. Bellwether wonders if Scam accidentally caused him to leave using his superpower, which he had no understanding of or control over at the time.

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