A Novel by Scotty Comegys
Cassie’s
Comet
A darkly comic coming-of-age journey across late-1970s Europe — where an aimless young Texan finds herself trapped between love, deception, and a dangerous international scheme.
About the Book
A Journey Across Europe
Gone Wrong
In 1979, twenty-two-year-old Cassie Tate leaves small-town Texas for what she believes will be the adventure of a lifetime: a reunion with her Army boyfriend stationed in Germany. Instead, she arrives to discover the charming Marshall High football hero she once trusted has gone AWOL — and drawn her into something far more dangerous than she ever imagined.
Swept across Western Europe in battered vans, cheap hotels, border crossings, and desperate escapes, Cassie becomes entangled in a reckless green card scheme and an international gun-trafficking plot with ties to terrorism. Far from home, Cassie finds herself increasingly trapped in a scheme she never agreed to—and one she cannot easily escape. She must rely on instincts she never knew she possessed.
By turns suspenseful, darkly funny, and deeply human, Cassie’s Comet follows one young woman’s transformation from drifting observer to reluctant survivor. The Comet itself appears like a distant signal at the beginning and end — a quiet symbol of fate, freedom, and the fragile hope of finding one’s way home.
Rich with vivid settings, sharp dialogue, and unforgettable characters, Scotty Comegys delivers a cinematic debut novel full of grit, heart, and hard-earned self-discovery.
What Readers Are Saying
Praise for Cassie’s Comet
Lush, engaging prose brings the naïve but resourceful Cassie to life amid a cinematic backdrop stretching from East Texas to Amsterdam and beyond. Cassie’s Comet is a multi-layered, well-paced novel that’s chock full of heart, with page-turning richness derived from the awareness and strength of character our plucky heroine gains while learning life lessons about men the hard way.
John Locke
New York Times bestselling author
Cassie’s Comet makes me want to take a Greyhound bus to a small-town diner and plot a heist with Eurotrash thugs while staying one step ahead of Interpol.
Mitch C.
Book Club Reader
Comegys does a magnificent job of taking you into the past through the eyes of Cassie, a young East Texas girl who suddenly finds herself in the middle of an international terrorist plot. Nothing is as it seems, but she goes from a girl who casually rides the waves of life to a woman who takes on the impossible.
Phylis C.
Book Club Reader
Scotty Comegys stitches the words together perfectly to portray lovable sad-sack Cassie on her unexpectedly harrowing European journey. You’ll be rooting for her with every preposterous turn taken by her lousy boyfriend in his dented plumber’s truck.
Gretchen L.
Book Club Reader
About the Author
Scotty Comegys
Scotty Comegys grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, with deep ties to the East Texas towns that shape the world of Cassie’s Comet. The novel’s European settings draw from her own travels abroad during her twenties — journeys made by backpack, bicycle, VW bus, and alongside the colorful personalities who would later inspire her fiction.
Before turning to law, she taught high school English in Shreveport, then spent a decade in the Midwest attending graduate school at Indiana University and working within Chicago’s news scene. Returning home in 1985, she balanced law practice, family life, and community involvement while continuing to write fiction rooted in Southern voices, contradictions, and resilience.
Her short fiction most recently appeared in Glass Mountain 36 (Spring 2026) with the story “Helping Hand.” Cassie’s Comet is her debut novel — and a bold new chapter in her literary journey.