Kirkus Reviews • Best Historical Fiction of 2019 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.

Phantoms: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Kiefer, Christian

United States

Liveright

For fans of Denis Johnson and Peter Matthiessen, a literary thriller from one of the most exciting new voices in American fiction. Bill Reed manages a wildlife sanctuary in rural Idaho, caring for injured animals―raptors, a wolf, and his beloved bear, Majer, among them―that are unable to survive in the wild. Seemingly rid of his troubled past, Bill hopes to marry the local veterinarian and live a quiet life together, the promise of which is threatened when a childhood friend is released from prison. Suddenly forced to confront the secrets of his criminal youth, Bill battles fiercely to preserve the shelter that protects these wounded animals and to keep hidden his turbulent, even dangerous, history. Alternating between past and present, Christian Kiefer contrasts the wreckage of Bill’s crime-ridden years in Reno, Nevada, with the elusive promise of a peaceful future. In finely sculpted prose imaginatively at odds with the harsh, volatile world Kiefer evokes, The Animals builds powerfully toward the revelation of Bill’s defining betrayal―and the drastic lengths Bill goes to in order to escape the consequences.

The Animals: A Novel

Fiction. Renowned installation artist Frank Poole has embarked on his most ambitious project to date: an entire housing subdivision in the desert of Nevada, with every element painted stark white. By his side is his young wife Caitlin, his manager and confidante who keeps the volatile artist functioning from day to day. But as Frank grows increasingly anxious about his undertaking, Caitlin learns she is pregnant and begins to wonder what the future might hold for them both. At turns funny, tragic, triumphant and harrowing, ONE DAY SOON TIME WILL HAVE NO PLACE LEFT TO HIDE is a documentary film in prose. Structured as a "kinoroman," a novella-as-film-script-as novella, the text explores the nature of art, of watching and of being watched, of life put on display, all the while focusing on the day-to-day existence of one couple as they work through the incendiary materials of their lives together.

One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide

Nouvella

Keith Corcoran has spent his entire life preparing to be an astronaut. At the moment of his greatness, finally aboard the International Space Station, hundreds of miles above Earth's swirling blue surface, he receives word that tragedy has befallen his family and that, in its wake, his wife has left their failing marriage. Returning to earth, to his now empty suburban home, Keith is alone with the ghosts, the memories and feelings he can barely acknowledge. He is a mathematical genius, a brilliant engineer, a revered astronaut, but nothing has prepared him for such a vacancy.
His experiences in space quickly dwindle to a distant memory. What remains are endlessly interlocking cul-de-sacs, big box stores, enormous parking lots. And yet out of this landscape comes reconnection. A neighbor who holds a secret to Keith's own crumbling life. A man from a distant country who presents an opportunity for redemption. An unlikely friendship that helps him come to some understanding about everything he has lost. And finally a sense of how to live under the weight of gravity.
The Infinite Tides is a deeply moving, tragicomic story of love, loss, and resilience. It is also an indelible and nuanced portrait of modern American life, rendering our strengths and weaknesses with great and tender beauty.

The Infinite Tides: A Novel

Bloomsbury USA

Set in depleted, post-recession suburbia, with its endlessly interlocking cul-de-sacs, mega-parking lots and big box stores, The Infinite Tides tells the story of star astronaut Keith Corcoran's return to earth. Keith comes home from a lengthy mission aboard the International Space Station to find his wife and daughter gone, and a house completely empty of furniture, as if Odysseus had returned to Ithaca to find that everyone he knew had forgotten about him and moved on. Keith is a mathematical and engineering genius, but he is ill equipped to understand what has happened to him, and how he has arrived at the center of such vacancy. Then, he forges an unlikely friendship with a neighboring Ukrainian immigrant, and slowly begins to reconnect with the world around him. As the two men share their vastly different personal and professional experiences, they paint an indelible and nuanced portrait of modern American life. The result is a deeply moving, tragicomic and ultimately redemptive story of love, loss and resilience, and of two lives lived under the weight of gravity.

The Infinite Tides

“[A] galloping great read... [a] genuine work of art.”―Porter Shreve, San Francisco Chronicle, front-page review Bill Reed manages a wildlife sanctuary in rural Idaho, caring for injured animals unable to survive in the wild ―raptors, a wolf, and his beloved bear, Majer, among them. He hopes to marry the local vet and live out a quiet life, until a childhood friend is released from prison and threatens to reveal Bill’s darkest secrets. Suddenly forced to confront his criminal past, Bill battles fiercely to preserve both the shelter and his hard-won new identity. Alternating between the past and the present, The Animals builds powerfully toward the revelation of Bill’s defining betrayal―and the drastic lengths he’ll go to in order to escape the consequences.

Literary

"For anyone who believes, as I do, that the best hope for our fractured country is local, not national, Christian Kiefer's new novel The Heart of it All will provide a welcome balm for the spirit. Here are people worth spending time with, not because they're perfect, but because they're not. What's wrong with them isn't nearly as consequential as how hard they fight for a better life, and not just for themselves. You set the book down and think, 'This is what we're made of.' Or should be."-Richard Russo, author of Somebody's Fool A small, declining town in Ohio. A family bereaved by terrible loss. A searing narrative about how American lives touch each other across divides both real and imagined... Set in failing small town in central Ohio, The Heart of It All asks how one manages, in an America of increasing unsurety, to find a sense of family and community. Focusing on the members of three families- the Baileys, a white family who have put down deep roots in the community; the Marwats, an immigrant family that owns the town's largest employer; and the Shaws, especially young Anthony, an outsider whose very presence gently shakes the town's understanding of itself. A gorgeous, stirring novel in the classic vein of Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson, Richard Russo, and Kent Haruf, The Heart of It All asks the reader to consider an America both divided and bound by its differences.

The Heart of It All

Melville House

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kiefer, Christian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kiefer, Christian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kiefer, Christian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Phantoms: A Novel

The Animals: A Novel

One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide

The Infinite Tides: A Novel

The Infinite Tides

The Animals: A Novel

The Heart of It All