We had the opportunity to talk with Fleischmann about his novel and its inspirations, as well as his love of comic books, his grandparents’ time in Tanacross, Alaska where his novel is set, and how real world events play a critical story role when novels are set in the past.  We were also fortunate enough to get a tiny idea about his next book.

Hi Raymond! Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Well, I grew up just outside of Washington, D.C., but I went to both graduate school and undergrad in the Midwest. I’ve lived in Seattle, too, but at this point in my life Bloomington, Indiana, really feels like my home. I live there with my wife and three daughters. I’m 36 years old, and I generally prefer cats to dogs and the winter to the summer. I don’t have many dreams at night, but when I do, I mostly dream of music. I brush my teeth a lot because I hate going to the dentist.

Was writing something you always knew you wanted to do, or did you come about it through a more circuitous path?

It’s definitely something I came to through a circuitous path. I was not at all an avid reader until college, and even then I didn’t want to write prose. I wanted to write comic books. I even created my own major in undergrad, a major I called “Writing for Sequential Art,” which was essentially scriptwriting for comics. And as part of the curriculum I designed, I made myself take some fiction workshops, and what I found was that I far preferred writing short stories and novels to writing comics. I still love comics — they’re kind of my first writing love, in effect — but I certainly came to prose writing somewhat late.

What were some of your influences in writing How Quickly She Disappears?

I think my whole life influenced How Quickly She Disappears, at least on the level of its characters and what makes them up, but if you’re asking about books and the like, I think that all of my writing has been influenced by books like In Cold Blood and writers like J.M. Coetzee and Ian McEwan. I’m drawn to novels that are propelled by relatively simple, often violent acts, but do so in a way that’s careful, human, and deeply examined.

Your incredible depictions of the Alaskan setting are so striking and vivid – do you have a connection to the area?  Have you visited or lived there?

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, my paternal grandparents lived in Tanacross, Alaska, which is the small Athabaskan village where my novel is set. Apart from the broadest biographical details, the characters in my novel really bear nothing in common with my grandparents — both my grandmother and grandfather were lovely, inspiring people, and they were happily married for over sixty years — but I grew up hearing their stories about Alaska and the cold, the isolation, the long days, the long nights. So, although my characters are quite fictional, the setting is very real, and I did my best to describe it accurately and respectfully. I’m glad you think I got it right.

In your novel, Elisabeth’s connection to her twin sister is so deep and illustrated in such a heart-tugging way, it made me wonder if you ARE a twin, or have twins in your family?

I’m not a twin, and I don’t have any twins in my family, but I’m flattered that you felt the need to ask this question. I do have a sister, however — my sister Lydia, who’s two years older than me — and I think that many of the novel’s meditations on siblings and family were certainly influenced by her presence in my life. Siblings are special, you know? They’re your first friends, and you feel indelibly tied to them in a great many ways.

Global events of the time, particularly World War II, have an effect on characters and situations in the novel, but you chose to set the opening events in a unique time period just before the U.S. entered the war. How did you decide on that exact timing?

I’ve always thought that the interwar period was an interesting time in U.S. history, and it’s one that hasn’t been written about as much as the years that immediately followed. Novels set in the past walk an interesting tightrope: They’re fictional, of course, but because historical events are quite real, the story has to conform to events that really happened, at least if you’re striving to write realist fiction. So, in that way, beginning the novel in the summer of 1941 appealed to me because I knew it would give some inherent structure to the narrative. I knew that Pearl Harbor would occur in December 1941, and that this would steer the story in some way. I knew that there would be widespread anxiety about the war, and that this would steer the story, too. Creating a narrative for an entire novel can feel a bit daunting, but these historical events and the touchstones they offered made it a little easier to build my narrative.

You (very effectively) use a lot of flashbacks to tell this story. Did you always imagine telling it that way, or did you ever consider structuring the story any other way?

The flashback scenes were actually a very late addition to the story. The novel went through about five major drafts, and the flashback chapters didn’t make it in until the fourth draft. I was worried that these chapters might do nothing more than ruin the pacing of the novel, but what I found was that they helped it, I think, and hopefully they added more dimensions to the characters, too. So much of the story revolves around the main character’s missing sister, and I realized that we needed to meet that sister on the page, not just hear our main character’s reminiscences of her.

If I may ask a slightly personal question, in the acknowledgements of your book, you have written such sweet, beautiful words about your wife that it is practically poetry! So where in the world did you get the inspiration for the cold, loveless marriage of John and Elisabeth?!

You’ve really done your homework! I’m flattered that you read my acknowledgements, too. My wife is pretty great, and the simple answer is that I wrote those scenes before ever meeting her. All in all, this novel took me about six years to write, and the chilly dynamics between John and Elisabeth were laid out very early on. And honestly, their marriage is so rough because, well, nice marriages aren’t interesting. Stories are all about conflict, and I knew that Elisabeth’s marriage would have to suffer for the sake of a more compelling story.

On a day where you can read purely for pleasure, what books and authors do you tend to reach for?

T.C. Boyle or David Sedaris. Boyle has been writing consistently amazing short stories for almost forty years now, and every story of his is just so damn readable. It carries you from sentence to sentence, movement to movement. Sedaris is the same way, but of course he’s funnier, and frankly I’m surprised that he’s not more widely celebrated. He’s immensely popular, naturally, but that’s not what I mean by “celebrated.” I feel like David Sedaris is one of the greatest living stylists we have, and yet this isn’t talked about enough. He’s funny, sure, but does everyone realize what a great writer he is? He’s absolutely masterful.

And finally, what is coming up next for you? What projects are on the horizon?

I’m plugging away on my second novel, which Penguin Random House bought along with my first. My next book is set on a fictional island off the coast of Seattle, and it’s about a young woman who moves back home to renovate and sell the house where her father was killed ten years earlier. Unbeknownst to her, however, she befriends her father’s murderer, and the story goes from there. Think House of Sand and Fog meets The Stranger Beside Me.

Raymond Fleischmann’s debut novel, How Quickly She Disappears, is available now from Penguin Random House (Berkley Books). Fleischmann has published short fiction in The Iowa Review, Cimarron Review, The Pinch, and Los Angeles Review, among many others, and he’s received fellowships and scholarships from Richard Hugo House and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He earned his MFA from Ohio State University and now lives in Bloomington, Ind., with his wife and three daughters. Follow him on Instagram @raymond.fleischmann or on Twitter @R_Fleischmann.

Will you be picking up How Quickly She Disappears? Tell us in the comments below!

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Read on to discover our picks and tell us if you will be checking out any of these releases in the comments below!

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
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Already being hailed as “a Grapes of Wrath for our times” and “a new American classic,” Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope.

The Other People by C.J. Tudor
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A gripping thriller about a man’s quest for the daughter no one else believes is still alive, from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man and The Hiding Place.

All the Ways We Said Goodbye by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White
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The New York Times bestselling authors of The Glass Ocean and The Forgotten Room return with a glorious historical adventure that moves from the dark days of two World Wars to the turbulent years of the 1960s, in which three women with bruised hearts find refuge at Paris’ legendary Ritz hotel.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore
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Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

The Whispers of War by Julia Kelly
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The start of World War II looms over three friends who struggle to remain loyal as one of them is threatened with internment by the British government, from the author of the “sweeping, stirring” (Kristin Harmel, internationally bestselling author of The Room on Rue Amélie ) The Light Over London.

Followers by Megan Angelo
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An electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make and the profound moment that changes the meaning of privacy forever.

When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald
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A heart-swelling debut for fans of The Silver Linings Playbook and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. When We Were Vikings is an uplifting debut about an unlikely heroine whose journey will leave you wanting to embark on a quest of your own, because after all… We are all legends of our own making.

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
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From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits comes an epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents, following two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a new place to call home.

The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao
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In this riveting and disquieting thriller about the secrets and betrayals that accompany exorbitant wealth—imagine Crazy Rich Asians as written by Gillian Flynn—two sisters from a Chinese-Indonesian family grapple with the past after one of them poisons their entire family.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
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A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

The Better Liar by Tanen Jones
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An electric, twisted portrait of sisterhood and the ties that bind, The Better Liar is a stunning debut with a heart-stopping, twist-after-twist finale that will beg the question: How far would you go to get what’s yours?

How Quickly She Disappears by Raymond Fleischmann
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The Dry meets Silence of the Lambs in this intoxicating tale of literary suspense set in the relentless Alaskan landscape about madness and obsession, loneliness and grief, and the ferocious bonds of family …

Which release are you most excited for? Tell us in the comments below!

The post January 2020 Fiction Book Releases appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

In 1941, Elisabeth lives in tiny Tanacross, Alaska with her husband, who works as a teacher for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and their bright, precocious daughter. While Elisabeth takes great pride in her close relationship with her daughter Margaret, her marriage is as cold and icy as the Alaskan wilderness that they call home. The deepest love in Elisabeth’s heart, however, is for her twin sister Jacqueline, who disappeared in childhood. Jacqueline still appears in her dreams, and though it has been twenty years, Elisabeth is convinced her sister is still alive…somewhere.

While living in a cold, desolate location in a cold, lonely marriage, an unusual confluence of events puts a stranger named Alfred into Elisabeth’s life. He’s a stranger who is obviously dangerous, but he also claims to know how to find Jacqueline.

Thus begins a cat and mouse game where the stakes grow exponentially with every step. As Alfred releases bits of evidence and information about Jacqueline to Elisabeth, he asks for more and more from her in return. Dealing with such a man is dangerous, and it further isolates Elisabeth from her family and her neighbours. But even the possibility of reuniting with her long lost twin is too great to turn her back on, and Elisabeth soon finds herself under Alfred’s spell.

Interspersed among the chapters telling the story of Alfred’s manipulations, Fleischmann fills in the gaps of Elisabeth’s childhood and her relationship with Jacqueline as they were raised by their father when their mother passed away while the girls were quite young.

Elisabeth’s obsession with recapturing the bond she remembers by finding her twin becomes all-consuming. As the stakes that Alfred sets become higher and higher, readers will find themselves barely able to hold on as they wait to see just how high of a price Elisabeth is willing to pay, and whether she will ever get what she is seeking.

Masterfully putting all the pieces of the past and the present together, Fleischmann assembles a story that fascinates, captivates, terrifies, and at times breaks the heart of the reader.

How Quickly She Disappears is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Will you be picking up How Quickly She Disappears? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

The Dry meets Silence of the Lambs in this intoxicating tale of literary suspense, set in the relentless Alaskan landscape, about madness and obsession, loneliness and grief, and the ferocious bond of family…

It’s 1941 in small-town Alaska and Elisabeth Pfautz is alone.  She’s living far from home, struggling through an unhappy marriage, and she spends her days tutoring her precocious young daughter.  Elisabeth’s twin sister disappeared without a trace twenty years earlier, and Elisabeth’s life has never recovered.  Cryptic visions of her sister haunt her dreams, and Elisabeth’s crushing loneliness grows more intense by the day.  But through it all, she clings to one belief: That her sister is still alive, and that they’ll be reunited one day.

And that day may be coming soon.  Elisabeth’s world is upended when Alfred Seidel – an enigmatic German bush pilot – arrives in town and murders a local man in cold blood.  Sitting in his cell in the wake of his crime, Alfred refuses to speak to anyone except for Elisabeth.  He has something to tell her: He knows exactly what happened to her long-missing sister, but he’ll reveal this truth only if Elisabeth fulfills three requests.

Increasingly isolated from her neighbors and imprisoned by the bitter cold and her own obsession, Elisabeth lets herself slip deeper into Alfred’s web.  A tenuous friendship forms between them, even as Elisabeth struggles to understand Alfred’s game and what he’s after.

But if it means she’ll get answers, she’s willing to play by his rules.  She’s ready to sacrifice whatever it takes to be reunited with her sister, even if it means putting herself – and her family – in mortal danger.

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