Phantoms: A Novel

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 that has destroyed everything that he has held dear. It wasn’t until nineteen-year-old Ray approaches the small house in which he grew up, only to find it occupied by a white family in which he didn’t know. 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 American novel, he struggles to silence the phantoms that have trailed him from the muddy jungles. From the halcyon before World War II, and the wayward years of post-Vietnam era, Phantoms/ weaves the stories of two split families as they seek impossible closure.

Right off the bat, I could tell that Phantoms would be a fantastic read – and for the most part, it was. Phantoms was such a beautifully written book, expertly weaving a web full of old family secrets, hidden by the second World War, and the time afterward. Phantoms is such a realistic, heartbreaking story, filled with such amazing, well thought out characters, each with their own struggles, and as such, they are not perfect – and in all honesty, I found myself, in a sense, I couldn’t help but root for some of them, and for what they had accomplished throughout.