What Remains

What Remains follows William Deville, a young man from the American South, as he tries to mourn the loss of his mother on an open-ended journey to Japan in the post-9/11 years of the Bush administration. It's an age when digital media is proliferating, electronic surveillance is increasing, and anxiety over terrorism still runs high. His uncertain path leads him to encounters with extraordinary individuals, including one person deep in the Japanese countryside who unlocks haunting secrets about his mother. This knowledge ineluctably alters his return home and his quest for closure. When he is caught up in the public hysteria and spectacle of a terrorism scare, though, how will he navigate his way out of the situation? How does he untangle his private need for mourning from social and political forces beyond his influence? And when words lose their meaning in the distortion of public discourse, is there anything to cut through the noise and re-establish space for clarity and understanding? This debut novel by Ry Beville captures the ethos of the early 2000s, when Millennials were coming of age and negotiating an increasingly globalized existence. On a thematic level, What Remains grapples with issues even more relevant today, including the amplified power of disinformation in the digital age, identity politics and media bias. As the story unfolds, it ultimately examines the role of language, from courts, bureaucracy and politics to hip-hop and poetry. (from the back cover)