The stunning second novel from National Book Award finalist Andrew KrivĂĄkââan extraordinarily elegant writer, with a deep awareness of the natural worldâ (The New York Times Book Review)âtells 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 daughterâs husband, Bexhet, an immigrant, fights in World War IIâreturning to Dardan, Pennsylvania, only to be taken in a hunting accident on Hannahâs familyâs land. Finally, Hannahâs younger son, Sam, goes MIA in Vietnam.
And so there is only Bo, a quiet man full of sorrow and conviction and a firstbornâs 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 explorationâthe second stand-alone novel in a trilogy that began with the National Book Award finalist The Sojournâof 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 Eveâas the Vietnam War winds downâthis 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 KrivĂĄkâs The Signal Flame is âa complex and layered portrait of a time and place, and a family shaped, generation after generation, by the memory of warâ (The Boston Globe).