The Signal Flame
A Novel
Published on 12. September 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-1-5011-2638-3 (ISBN)
Description
The stunning second novel from National Book Award finalist Andrew Krivak-"an extraordinarily elegant writer, with a deep awareness of the natural world" (The New York Times Book Review)-tells the heartbreaking, captivating story about a family awaiting the return of their youngest son from the Vietnam War.
In a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, Hannah and her son Bo mourn the loss of the family patriarch, Jozef. They were three generations under one roof; a war-haunted family in a war-torn century. Jozef was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I. His American-born daughter's husband, Bexhet, an immigrant, fights in World War II-returning to Dardan, Pennsylvania, only to be taken in a hunting accident on Hannah's family's land. Finally, Hannah's younger son, Sam, goes MIA in Vietnam.
And so there is only Bo, a quiet man full of sorrow and conviction and a firstborn's sense of duty. He is left to grieve but also to hope for reunion, to fall in love and create a new life, to embrace the land and work its mountain soil. The Signal Flame is a stirring exploration-the second stand-alone novel in a trilogy that began with the National Book Award finalist The Sojourn-of generations of men and the events that define them, brothers who take different paths, the old European values yielding to new world ways, and the convalescence of memory and war.
Beginning shortly after Easter in 1972 and ending on Christmas Eve-as the Vietnam War winds down-this ambitious novel honors the cycles of earth and body, humming with blood and passion, and it confirms as a writer of extraordinary vision and power. Andrew Krivak's The Signal Flame is "a complex and layered portrait of a time and place, and a family shaped, generation after generation, by the memory of war" (The Boston Globe).
In a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, Hannah and her son Bo mourn the loss of the family patriarch, Jozef. They were three generations under one roof; a war-haunted family in a war-torn century. Jozef was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I. His American-born daughter's husband, Bexhet, an immigrant, fights in World War II-returning to Dardan, Pennsylvania, only to be taken in a hunting accident on Hannah's family's land. Finally, Hannah's younger son, Sam, goes MIA in Vietnam.
And so there is only Bo, a quiet man full of sorrow and conviction and a firstborn's sense of duty. He is left to grieve but also to hope for reunion, to fall in love and create a new life, to embrace the land and work its mountain soil. The Signal Flame is a stirring exploration-the second stand-alone novel in a trilogy that began with the National Book Award finalist The Sojourn-of generations of men and the events that define them, brothers who take different paths, the old European values yielding to new world ways, and the convalescence of memory and war.
Beginning shortly after Easter in 1972 and ending on Christmas Eve-as the Vietnam War winds down-this ambitious novel honors the cycles of earth and body, humming with blood and passion, and it confirms as a writer of extraordinary vision and power. Andrew Krivak's The Signal Flame is "a complex and layered portrait of a time and place, and a family shaped, generation after generation, by the memory of war" (The Boston Globe).
Reviews / Votes
"Krivak is an extraordinarily elegant writer, with a deep awareness of the natural world. In spare and beautiful prose he evokes an austere landscape, a struggling family and a deep source of pain ... Krivak sets the grandeur of the mountain as a backdrop to the intimate drama of the heart."-The New York Times Book Review "A satisfying act of conjuration, the sine qua non of realistic fiction: a vivid rendering of felt life. "The Signal Flame'' is a complex and layered portrait of a time and place, and a family shaped, generation after generation, by the memory of war."
-The Boston Globe "There is a deft, scholarly touch to Andrew Krivak's straightforward writing ... a gripping tale."
-The Buffalo News "[G]reat fiction ... This beautifully told story will remain with the reader as a haunting and rewarding memory for a very long time."
-The Minneapolis Star Tribune "[A] bleak but breathtaking second novel ... it's Krivak's gorgeous prose and deep grasp of the relationship between longing and loss that make the book such a stunner."
-Publisher's Weekly, starred review "With studied language and a strong sense of place, Krivak elucidates how family structures and narratives fractured, maintained, and evolved between World Wars I and the Vietnam War."
-Library Journal, starred review "Krivak's story and characters are mythic. His prose is spare, but his portrait of a little-known mountain region 'rife with stones and rattlesnakes' is compelling, beautiful, and ennobling."
-Booklist, starred review "[F]ull of resounding depths: a dark commemoration of a dark time but offering the slim hope that things will get better."
-Kirkus Reviews "Readers will hear some echoes of Faulkner in The Signal Flame, and even more of Kent Haruf in the simplicity, honesty, and wisdom of its prose. But what they'll hear most is the deep, thoughtful, resonant voice of Andrew Krivak, a writer seemingly destined for great things."
-Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls There are many pleasures to be found in The Signal Flame: The intimacy and love with which Krivak writes about his postage stamp of rural Pennsylvania. His keen sense of time and place, the woods and forests and hills of the Endless Mountains. Page by page the book itself feels like an outgrowth of the soil in in which it is steeped.
-Brad Kessler, author of Birds in Fall "This is a novel of tremendous sorrow and tremendous beauty. Of love shaped by war, and of how the past haunts the present, and shapes the future. An incandescent work."
-Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings "Andrew Krivak gives us characters and a community that could have come out of The Deer Hunter-men and women challenged by natural and human-made disasters, love and simmering hate. While these small town people confront life's big questions, the true north of the novel is in the day-to-day, the ordinary, where Krivak has found the extraordinary. A well-crafted novel, elegantly told, The Signal Flame is a testament to Krivak's singular talent."
-Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped "The language in this beautiful book is as textured and rich-as quiet and grand and unforgettable-as its setting: a small Pennsylvania town tucked in the mountains. It isn't often that a story finds me making comparisons to literary greats from the first page. This is one of those books. In the end, what Krivak does is something all his own, and it is a triumph."
-Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Simon & Schuster
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
349 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5011-2638-3 (9781501126383)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Andrew Krivak is the author of The Signal Flame and the National Book Award finalist, The Sojourn, which also won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Chautauqua Prize. He lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts.