Phantoms: A Novel - Hardcover

Kiefer, Christian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871404818 ISBN 13: 9780871404817

Publisher: Liveright, 2019

Synopsis

One of the Millions' "Most Anticipated" Books of 2019
Torn apart by war and bigotry, two families confront long-buried secrets in this haunting American novel of World War II and Vietnam.

Ray Takahashi’s return from the battlefields of World War II should have been triumphant, but the fragrant, budding orchards of his rural Northern California home hide a secret that has destroyed everything he holds dear. With his hair now trimmed short and his newly broadened shoulders filling in his uniform, nineteen-year-old Ray approaches the small house in which he grew up, tucked behind rows of plum trees he planted with his father, only to find it occupied by a family he has does not know, a white family.

Two decades later, John Frazier adjusts to his own homecoming. Detoxing from a dope addiction acquired in the barracks of Vietnam, yet still aching to write the next great American novel, he struggles to silence the phantoms that have trailed him from the muddy jungles. Frazier’s ambitions are put on hold when he finds himself an unwitting witness to a confrontation, decades in the making, between two steely matriarchs: his aunt, Evelyn Wilson, and her former neighbor, Kimiko Takahashi.

From the halcyon days of pre–World War II Newcastle, when fruit trees glowed like jewels, through the dusty, cramped nights of Tule Lake, and the wayward years of the post-Vietnam era, Phantoms weaves the splintered stories of two families as they seek an impossible closure. A jarring examination of the personal cost of American exceptionalism and imperialism, and the ghosts that haunt us today, this saga affirms Christian Kiefer’s expanding place in contemporary literature.

About this title

About the Author:

Christian Kiefer has a PhD in American literature from the University of California–Davis and directs the low-residency MFA at Ashland University. The author of The Animals and The Infinite Tides, he lives with his family in Placer County, California.

Review:

"Phantoms sings from its surreal beginning to its stunning end. Kiefer's prose sweeps the reader back in time to the 1940s, to the internment of Japanese Americans, to WWII and on to northern California in the 1960s, as the narrator unravels the mystery of Raymond Takahashi. Throughout, Kiefer's writing is lovely, ripe with striking figurative language, as the story unspools in a succession of devastating encounters between two American families: one white, the other Japanese American. In the end, the reader is left with hard truth, bitter as unripe fruit: how we try every day to erase the crimes, large and small, of our pasts, how we pretend to forget them even as they shape our every breath. This is a beautiful, relevant read."- Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing 
"Phantoms is a virtuosic unearthing of buried betrayals and traumas--the kind that have the force to shatter myths, both national and personal, and to breach long-held silences. Christian Kiefer has woven a deeply powerful exploration of the way the lies we allow to slip past us can come to poison the foundations of our lives and tear asunder the lives of those around us. This book hums with the pulse of poetry and the pace of a mystery. Let it draw you in and leave you changed."- Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel 
"The pacing of Phantoms felt like a perfect gallop into every sunset. From the first paragraph, I was captured by the vibrancy of Kiefer's prose, both as sophisticated and shimmering as the family secrets his characters unwind. Phantoms is a story of history, examination, and is a pleasure to read." - Natashia Deón, author of Grace, a novel 
"In this eerily propulsive and devastating novel, Christian Kiefer aims for the heart, and its struggles to know truth and to love with dignity, even when unknowingly surrounded by lies.This is a daringly complex vision by a writer who takes an unflinching look at American exceptionalism, and how the endless effort to prop up that myth ultimately even damages those it is intended to protect. A stunning, suspenseful, heartbreakingly gorgeous read of a book." - Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Where the end Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye

"A rapturous nostalgia haunts the pages of Christian Kiefer's new novel, Phantoms--nostalgia for lives once lived, for futures lost, for the Edenic before of decisions that cannot be undone. In aching, earthly prose, and with resolute sincerity, Kiefer explores the savage consequences of American fear."- Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn

"Christian Kiefer is a masterful writer, and this magisterial novel is aching with beauty and power. This is a great book."- Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels

"Christian Kiefer's Phantoms is a kaleidoscopic marvel. With each new chapter, Kiefer deftly turns the dial, shifting patterns and textures and hues, urging us to question assumptions and to reconsider old truths. In confronting the complex legacies of World War II and Vietnam, Kiefer has delivered a haunting story of the past that will make us see the present anew."- Kirstin Chen, author of Soy Sauce for Beginners and Bury What We Cannot Take 

"Set in the golden foothills of the Sierra Nevada and spanning the middle decades of the twentieth century, Phantoms tells the intertwined stories of two families, two wars, and two soldiers trying to make their way home. Exploring the brutal legacies of racism and war with unflinching honesty and incandescent prose, this novel asks: Who gets to tell their stories, and who doesn't? What if you're entrusted with--or thrust into--someone else's story? Who gets to find their way home?"
- Naomi Williams, author of Landfalls

About this edition

• Publisher: Liveright
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0871404818
• ISBN 13: 9780871404817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288