War. Prejudice. Race. And the experience of "the other." Christian Kiefer talks about his remarkable new novel PHANTOMS, and more.

Christian Kiefer is a poet, musician and the knockout author of The Animals, One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place to Hide, and now Phantoms, a blistering great novel about war, prejudice and the Japanese-American experience. I'm not the only one to love this novel with a passion. Take a look at these raves:

“Haunting.... Ray’s poignant suffering is but one example of the bigotry and fear experienced by Japanese born U.S. citizens after Pearl Harbor, the same bigotry and fear of the other that still sadly exists in America today.... YA: Ray’s story of young love and loss as well as an often omitted aspect of WWII history will resonate with teens.” — Deborah Donovan, Booklist

“Kiefer's sweeping novel (after One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place to Hide) examines the ways war shapes the lives of ordinary people.... Kiefer's story sheds light on the prejudice violence ignites and on the Japanese American experience during a fraught period of American history, and makes for engaging and memorable outing.” — Publishers Weekly

“Sweet life spills from every perfect word. It will break your heart, and in the breaking, fill you with bittersweet but luminous joy.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“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 J. Williams, author of Landfalls

“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

 
I always think that writers are haunted into writing the books they write. What was haunting you?
I think hauntingis a great way to put it; the haunting here has largely to do with my community—not just in terms of where I grew up but people who look like me and, conversely, who don’t. I live in semi-rural Placer County, a place that has doubled in size since I was a child here but which is still basically a small town. Perhaps 12K population in all, and not part of any kind of urban sprawl. But you know, communities like mine are wonderful in a great many ways but they can also be inflexible, fearful, racist, insular, and so on. I love my community, but there was a story in its history that needed to be talked about, a kind of shame that we hold in our past, one common to the western states during the period of the second world war.