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    Phantoms: A Novel
    Phantoms: A Novel
    Phantoms: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Phantoms: A Novel

    Written by Christian Kiefer

    Narrated by Peter Berkrot

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.

    In prose recalling Thomas Wolfe, Phantoms is a stunning exploration of the ghosts of American exceptionalism that haunt us today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateApr 9, 2019
    ISBN9781684419920
    Phantoms: A Novel
    Author

    Christian Kiefer

    Christian Kiefer earned his PhD in American literature from the University of California, Davis, and is on the English faculty of American River College in Sacramento. He is an active poet, songwriter and recording artist, and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California with his wife and five sons.

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    Reviews for Phantoms

    4.5/5

    16 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Gorgeous writing, foreshadowing that draws the reader to turn pages, wonderful characters, and an exploration of deeply American themes propelled me to read Phantoms by Christian Kiefer in two sittings.John Frazier returns from Vietnam a shattered man. He moves in with his grandmother and takes a job pumping gas. He becomes involved with two formidable women whose husbands were once best friends--a confidence man, becoming the bearer of the secrets of their entwined family histories dating to the 1940s.Aunt Evelyn Wilson's husband ran an orchard. Kimiko Takahashi was a Japanese picture bride. Their husband worked together, friends over their shared love of the orchard. Their children grew up together.The ugliness of racism underlies the story of star-crossed lovers separated by WWII and the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese Removal Act, a story that ends in tragedy.They would love each other. In secrecy and in silence. And then all of it would blown away, not only because of history but because of their very lives, adrift as they were in the swirling spinning sea between one continent and another.~ from Phantoms by Christian KieferJohn has struggled for years to contain his experiences through his writing. His early promise as a 'war writer' has not been fulfilled. It is time to tell this other story, Ray Takahashi's story.If the kind of experiences I had in Vietnam have already become a tired American myth, over told, overanalyzed, then perhaps this is a good enough reason to justify what I am trying to do in these pages, returning to the 1969 of my memory not to write about Vietnam at long last but instead to narrate the story of someone I did not know but whose time in Place County has come to feel inextricably tied to my own. ~from Phantom by Christian KieferI love the language of this book. John notes that he had read Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe twice,"its sentences consuming me. O Lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again," and was reading it again after the war. I believe I have read it four times! I discovered Wolfe at sixteen in 1969, and fell in love with his language.This grim story also is a celebration of life. The ending is a beautiful affirmation that brought strong emotions and a catch in my throat.There are days--many of them--when golden light seems to pour forth from the very soil.~from Phantoms by Christian KieferI purchased an ebook.
    • 5/5
      An unforgettable story about fate, betrayal, and culpability.John Frazier, a young recently-returned Vietnam vet, is struggling with addiction and guilt for his part in the war. He stumbles across the story of another vet, Ray Takahashi, a Japanese-American sergeant who was allowed to fight on the European front during WWII and who then disappeared after returning to his hometown (John's hometown, also). (The area in question, Placer County, California, was in real life glad to see their Japanese fellows bused away to concentration camps and then actively discouraged from returning.) John is approached by a distant relative of his, a woman at the center of Ray's fate, and becomes involved in piecing together what happened that fateful day when Ray walked back into the life of the town from which his family had been forcibly displaced and imprisoned for the war's duration.A mystery, a study of friendships and racial tension, and a story of a soldier looking for a way to return to a civilian life. Beautifully written and very highly recommended.