About this item
Torn apart by war and bigotry, two families confront long-buried secrets in this haunting American novel of World War II and Vietnam.In the panoramic tradition of Charles Frazier's fiction, Phantoms is a fierce saga of American culpability. A Vietnam vet still reeling from war, John Frazier 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. John comes to learn that in the onslaught of World War II, the Takahashis had been displaced as once-beloved tenants of the Wilson orchard and sent to an internment camp. One question has always plagued both families: What happened to the Takahashi son, Ray, when he returned from service and found that Placer County was no longer home -- that nowhere was home for a Japanese American? As layers of family secrets unravel, the harrowing truth forces John to examine his own guilt.
About the Author
CHRISTIAN KIEFER's novels have appeared on best of the year lists from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist and have received rave reviews in The Washington Post, Oprah.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Brooklyn Rain, Library Journal, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. T.C. Boyle called his first novel, The Infinite Tides, "smart, lyrical [and] deeply moving" and noted its "emotional complexity and pure aching beauty." Pam Houston called it "the most emotionally and syntactically sophisticated debut I have ever seen." His second novel, The Animals (Liveright / W.W. Norton) was a best book of the year from Amazon.com and was praised by Richard Ford, Janet Fitch, and many others. Porter Shreve, writing about the novel in the San Francisco Chronicle, noted that "the book is not just a galloping great read; it's a violent, tender, terrifying, genuine work of art."Kiefer is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction. He has also enjoyed a long second career in music, under the auspices of which he has collaborated with members of Smog, Pedro the Lion, DNA, 7 Seconds, John Zorn's Naked City, Sun Kil Moon, Boxhead Ensemble, Califone, Cake, Kronos Quartet, Wilco, Low, Fun, Anathallo, and The Band, among many others.He holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California at Davis and has served as contributing editor for Zyzzyva and as fiction reader for VQR. He is currently the West Coast editor for The Paris Review and is the director of the Ashland University MFA.
