Jason Buchholz, whose work has appeared in the journals Gobbledegook and Switchback, has written a prophetic and engrossing supernatural thriller examining how memory surfaces after a near death experience. As third grade teacher Peregrine Long awaits the coming of a huge storm in his San Francisco classroom, he sees an image in his morning tea: a Chinese family--Li Yu, Bing and their two children, Rose and Henry--aboard a steamship. Images appear to Peregrine in standing bodies of water, and this particular one causes him to commit the story of this family's voyage from California to China to paper. After the small and mysterious publishing house Barbary Quarterly prints Peregrine's story, he receives a visit from 60-year-old Eva Wong, who claims to be the daughter of Rose and who demands to know what became of Henry, her uncle and Rose's brother. Li Yu's story of imprisonment and escape unfolds in parallel with Peregrine's burgeoning awareness and uneasy acceptance of the supernatural forces with which he's been gifted after a near drowning. What arises is a richly woven and haunting tale of memory, loss and identity, in which the ocean serves as the bridge that separates and binds the two distinct timelines together.
A Paper Son is a magical journey through memory and history, with Peregrine acting as the medium for voices that were silenced and lost in the pre-World War II immigration void. What makes Buchholz's debut sing is not the mystery, but how the characters handle and rise above their exceptional circumstances to come to terms with a painful and forgotten period of Asian American history. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant