Narrated by an unnamed woman and opening on an unspecified island, Tamirat’s first novel is a haunting investigation of identity and displacement. Newly arrived at a utopian commune that’s falling short of the mark, the narrator and her father keep to themselves, still processing the events that drove them from Boston. The two had been similarly isolated there, near but not part of the city’s Ethiopian community, until the narrator met Ayale. Working in a parking lot but dreaming—and scheming—for much more, the charismatic and manipulative Ayale changed the narrator’s life irrevocably.
Set in Trenton, Koelb’s electrifying fiction debut doesn’t just explore the limits of self-invention—it pushes them with everything it’s got. The novel opens in 1946. Abe Kunstler has just returned home from the service to find that his wife, newly empowered by her wartime factory work, is unwilling to resume the old gender roles. She kills him, assumes his identity, finds a job, woos a woman, and lives happily as a man until the early 1970s when the façade of his life, like the former industrial city itself, begins to crumble.