Flashlight

A novel tracing a fatherΓÇÖs disappearance across time,nationsand memoryfrom the author of Trust Exercise. One nightLouisa and her father take a walk on the beach. HeΓÇÖs carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tidebarely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. In chapters that shift from one member to the nextturning back again and again to that night by the seaSusan Choi’s Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one familyΓÇÖs catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her fatherSerkan ethnic Korean born and raised in Japanlost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American motherAnneis estranged from her family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is TobiasAnneΓÇÖs illegitimate sonwhose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences. What really happened to LouisaΓÇÖs father? Why did he take Louisa and her mother to Japan just before he disappeared? And how can we loveor make sense of our liveswhen thereΓÇÖs so much we canΓÇÖt see?