Father of the Four Passages - by Lois-Ann Yamanaka (Paperback)

About the Book

Sonia Kurisu, a streetwise young mother, struggles to raise her child, Sonny Boy, as she seeks to come to terms with the three children she aborted. Set in Hawaii and Las Vegas, this haunting novel about fathers, forgiveness, spirituality, and solace is Yamanaka's most ambitious work to date.

Book Synopsis

From "one of the most original voices on the American literary scene" (The Atlantic Monthly) comes the powerful tale of Sonia Kurisu, a young woman who grew up troubled in working-class Hawaii and struggles to raise her young son alone. Alternating between the present and the past, Yamanaka depicts Sonia's difficult childhood, her addictions to drugs and alcohol, and her string of bad lovers. As she tries to gain control of her life, she is haunted by the ghosts of three children she never had. A work of raw energy and searing honesty, Father of the Four Passages is an extraordinary testament to the redemptive power of love.

Review Quotes

"One of the strongest, most intelligent, inventive, and moving novels of the last several years." --Vince Passaro, Elle

"Haunting yet hopeful . . . The novel continues the unsparing exploration of themes that run through all of Yamanaka's fiction as well as her poetry: family dysfunction, poverty, and ostracism." --Michele Orecklin, Time

"Raw and surreal . . . In Father of the Four Passages, Yamanaka shows why she is one of the most controversial voices in Asian-American fiction--a writer who is not afraid to describe, often with brutal honesty, the lives of [the] disaffected and disconnected." --Jeff Waggoner, The New York Times Book Review

"This ostensibly depressing story becomes, in Yamanaka's hands, a scrappy, scathingly funny, openhearted tale of a pigheaded heroine who asks only for a glimmer of grace, and--once in a while, through dint of hard work--gets it." --The New Yorker

"Dense and haunting." --The Sunday Oregonian

"Moving . . . Readers should revel in [Yamanaka's] unsparing view of lowlife in contemporary Hawaii . . . You've got to give Yamanaka, and her characters, credit for their compulsion to go straight where no one wants to go, and fight their way back out." --Mindy Pennybacker, The Nation

"Harsher than ever in its unflinching depiction of stifled rage and twisted love, and charged with a fervid yet earthy mysticism, this is Yamanaka's most challenging work to date. Suffused with pathos, but never overwhelmed by sentiment, the novel settles itself deep into the rhythms and passions of its protagonists." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Lois-Ann Yamanaka is the author of the poetry collection Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre; the fiction trilogy Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, Blu's Hanging, and Heads by Harry; as well as a young adult novel, Name Me Nobody. She has won a Lannan Literary Award, an Asian American Literary Award, and an American Book Award. She lives in Honolulu.