Author Description

Product Description [Read by Amy McFadden] From one of the most imaginative minds in fiction comes this searing new novel. Pull Me Under tells the story of Rio Silvestri, who, when she was twelve years old, fatally stabbed a school bully. Rio, born Chizuru Akitani, is the Japanese American daughter of the revered violinist Hiro Akitani, a living national treasure in Japan and a man to whom Rio hasn't spoken since she left her home country for the United States and a new identity after her violent crime. Her father's death, along with a mysterious package that arrives on her doorstep in Boulder, Colorado, spurs her to return to Japan for the first time in twenty years. There she is forced to confront her past in ways she never imagined, pushing herself, her relationships with her husband and daughter, and her own sense of who she is to the brink. The novel's illuminating and palpably atmospheric descriptions of Japan and its culture, as well as its elegantly dynamic structure, call to mind both Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being and David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars. Pull Me Under is gripping, psychologically complex fiction at the heart of which is an affecting exploration of home, self-acceptance, and the limits of forgiveness. Review ''The writing of Kelly Luce is beautifully stark and simple, and at the same time playful, earthy, and violent. She's unique, a natural born writer, and Pull Me Under is a strange and very appealing novel, a journey to Japan and the primal scene of the main character's self -- which, like a volcano, may have already blown its top.'' --Rachel Kushner ''Kelly Luce's unforgettable debut is an elegant mystery, a tender story of family and forgiveness, an unsettling depiction of the darkness we each carry inside, and a hymn to Japan. Noodle shops, summer festivals, ancient temples, and the lush landscape of rura