Pull Me Under

A searing debut novel from one of the most imaginative minds in fiction.

Kelly Luce's Pull Me Under tells the story of Rio Silvestri, who, when she was twelve years old, fatally stabbed a school bully. Rio, born Chizuru Akitani, is the Japanese American daughter of the revered violinist Hiro Akitani—a Living National Treasure in Japan and a man Rio hasn't spoken to since she left her home country for the United States (and a new identity) after her violent crime. Her father's death, along with a mysterious package that arrives on her doorstep in Boulder, Colorado, spurs her to return to Japan for the first time in twenty years. There she is forced to confront her past in ways she never imagined, pushing herself, her relationships with her husband and daughter, and her own sense of who she is to the brink.

The novel's illuminating and palpably atmospheric descriptions of Japan and its culture, as well its elegantly dynamic structure, call to mind both Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being and David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars. Pull Me Under is gripping, psychologically complex fiction—at the heart of which is an affecting exploration of home, self-acceptance, and the limits of forgiveness.

"Luce deftly evokes Japan without exoticizing it...the final act is the novel’s strongest and most confident, weaving the book’s threads together and leaving a lasting reverberation." Publishers Weekly

Kelly Luce is the author of Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (2013), which won Foreword Reviews's 2013 Editor's Choice Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for book prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Writers' League of Texas. Her work has been honored by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Jentel Arts, Tin House, and the Sewanee Writer's Conference, and has recently appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Electric Literature, New England Review, American Short Fiction, and other publications. She was a Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received her MFA. She lives in Northern California.

I met Shinobu for the first time in 2002 at a Subway shop in Kawasaki. Neither of us cared for the chain’s sandwiches, but the location was convenient and open late. We’d connected on a website that matched students with private English conversation teachers. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be taking on private students...

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