The Signal Flame by Andrew Krivak Published by Scribner on January 24th 2017
Genres: Literary Fiction
Pages: 272
Format: eBook, Kindle Book
Source: NetGalley & Scribner
The stunning second novel from National Book Award finalist Andrew Krivak—a heartbreaking, captivating story about a family awaiting the return of their youngest son from the Vietnam War.
In a small town in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains Hannah and her son Bo mourn the loss of the family patriarch, Jozef Vinich. They were three generations under one roof. Three generations, but only one branch of a scraggy tree; they are a war-haunted family in a war-torn century. Having survived the trenches of World War I as an Austro-Hungarian conscript, Vinich journeyed to America and built a life for his family. His daughter married the Hungarian-born Bexhet Konar, who enlisted to fight with the Americans in the Second World War but brought disgrace on the family when he was imprisoned for desertion. He returned home to Pennsylvania a hollow man, only to be killed in a hunting accident on the family’s land. Finally, in 1971, Hannah’s prodigal younger son, Sam, was reported MIA in Vietnam.
And so there is only Bo, a quiet man full of conviction, a proud work ethic, and a firstborn’s sense of duty. He is left to grieve but also to hope for reunion, to create a new life, to embrace the land and work its soil through the seasons. The Signal Flame is a stirring novel about generations of men and women 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 Eve this ambitious novel beautifully evokes ordinary time, a period of living and working while waiting and watching and expecting. The Signal Flame is gorgeously written, honoring the cycles of earth and body, humming with blood and passion, and it confirms Andrew Krivak as a writer of extraordinary vision and power.
**Special thanks to NetGalley & Scribner for supplying my copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.**
The Signal Flame is a literary work about grief, loss, family and forgiveness.
I read a lot of positive reviews about this book and was very willing to indulge myself in it. Hanna lives with her family in a small town in Pennsylvania in the mountains. The family is struck with grief along 3 generations. Having lost her son in Vietnam, her father, and her husband she’s now living with her son Bo. Bo and Hannah are desperate to know anything about his brother Sam, even if it’s the bad news of being killed in the war, because knowing is always better than never knowing at all. Through the book, we can see the deep grief, the grudge and the desperate silent plead for forgiveness. Can Hannah forgive her husband’s killer and moreover his daughter. Can Bo do that?
The book was so perfectly written with excellent writing skills. It makes you think. It makes you long for forgiveness.
However, I have to admit, this wasn’t my cup of tea. I couldn’t handle the extent of loss in the book. I was struck with the amount of grief. So much loss. So much sorrow. Losing a father, a husband, a son, a lover, a newborn… All kinds of sorrow. Finally I was feeling down with sorrow seeping into my soul. It was dark. Moreover, I felt the story wasn’t moving.
Finally, this is a literary piece that I recommend, but you should prepare yourself for the dark and heavy grief shot.
About Andrew Krivak
Andrew Krivak is the author of The Sojourn, a novel set during WWI; A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, a memoir about his eight years in the Jesuit Order; and the editor of The Letters of William Carlos Williams to Edgar Irving Williams, 1902-1912. The grandson of Slovak immigrants, he grew up in Pennsylvania, has lived in London, and has taught at Harvard, Boston College, and the College of the Holy Cross. Krivak currently lives with his wife and three children in Massachusetts where he teaches in the Honors Program at Boston College.