Overview

A neonatal ICU nurse, consumed with grief over the losses of both her mother and newborn daughter, begins to suffer from a series of disturbingly vivid visions. A teenage girl is swept up in a doomed love affair with a young man interned at Manzanar, one of America's notorious concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Though decades-and worlds-apart, the lives of these two women are indelibly intertwined, and the actions of one will have profound and lasting implications on the other. At once a powerful coming-of-age novel, a heartbreaking love story, and a harrowing tale of suspense, The Wild Impossibility masterfully illuminates the resilience of love in the face of tragedy and the power of family to endure despite distance, time, and heartbreak.

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9781947548626

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Reviews

"""The Wild Impossibility is a breathtaking novel about what it means to be a mother. Cheryl Ossola is a fearless writer, and she has constructed a tale that goes back and forth between time periods with the utmost skill. Prepare to have your heart wrenched by this beautiful page-turner!"" --Katie Crouch, New York Times best-selling author of Girls in Trucks ""How tenaciously can memories struggle to be remembered? In The Wild Impossibility, Cheryl A. Ossola delivers an intriguing tale that opens in a modern neonatal intensive care unit in Berkeley, then reaches back through space and time to a most unlikely setting: the bleak World War II era prison camp at Manzanar in the California high desert. History has largely forgotten what little it bothered to learn about Manzanar in the first place, so Ossola starts with a blank page and fills it beautifully with fragmented flashbacks, contemporary marital drama and dogged pursuit of family history and heartbreak that spans generations. Interestingly, Ossola's storytelling also takes on some of the flavor of a Japanese kaidan, or ghost story. She portrays history with an accuracy that speaks well of her journalistic background, but she also understands the kaidan approach that a ghost story need not equate to a horror story. What better way to relive the disappeared past--and Ossola's heroine, Kira, eventually understands that she is on a voyage of discovery to reclaim her missing past...and repair her crumbling life."" --Richard Imamura, screenwriter of The Manzanar Fishing Club ""The Wild Impossibility dazzles on every page, with its wonderfully rich prose and layered story. Cheryl Ossola goes many levels below the surface, showing how a present life is infused with the past, how hearts are broken and mended, how at some level, there is no such thing as a past or present at all. It's a novel that will have its way with you because Ossola is such an accomplished writer."" --Nina Schuyler, author of the award-winning novel The Translator ""Ossola walks a wonderful wire here, sculpting a story that's readable and timely. The novel honors its history with austere accuracy, and Ossola captures her characters' complex emotional trajectories in gusts of poetry."" --Joshua Mohr, author of the novel All This Life ""The Wild Impossibility weaves together multi-generational, multicultural love stories that bear timely witness to our depths and heights as people, as nations, and invites us to ponder what's possible in ways crushing and uplifting. Sensual. Heartful."" --Ethel Rohan, author of The Weight of Him ""In lyric prose Cheryl Ossola takes us on an exhilarating journey, as Kira Esposito becomes a relentless detective of her dreams in a search for origins. Readers will time-travel on switchback trails, from Kira's 21st-century life with her husband to a Japanese interment camp in the 1940s--and back again. Ossola's stunning descriptions of the landscape ground us in a vivid a sense of place and the porous boundaries between time-realms create engrossing tensions in Kira's marriage. Ossola is masterful at showing the connection between dreams, quantum labyrinths, and daily life. By the end of this book you will be a seasoned time-traveler."" --Thaisa Frank, author of Enchantment and Heidegger's Glasses"

The Wild Impossibility is a breathtaking novel about what it means to be a mother. Cheryl Ossola is a fearless writer, and she has constructed a tale that goes back and forth between time periods with the utmost skill. Prepare to have your heart wrenched by this beautiful page-turner! --Katie Crouch, New York Times best-selling author of Girls in Trucks How tenaciously can memories struggle to be remembered? In The Wild Impossibility, Cheryl A. Ossola delivers an intriguing tale that opens in a modern neonatal intensive care unit in Berkeley, then reaches back through space and time to a most unlikely setting: the bleak World War II era prison camp at Manzanar in the California high desert. History has largely forgotten what little it bothered to learn about Manzanar in the first place, so Ossola starts with a blank page and fills it beautifully with fragmented flashbacks, contemporary marital drama and dogged pursuit of family history and heartbreak that spans generations. Interestingly, Ossola's storytelling also takes on some of the flavor of a Japanese kaidan, or ghost story. She portrays history with an accuracy that speaks well of her journalistic background, but she also understands the kaidan approach that a ghost story need not equate to a horror story. What better way to relive the disappeared past--and Ossola's heroine, Kira, eventually understands that she is on a voyage of discovery to reclaim her missing past...and repair her crumbling life. --Richard Imamura, screenwriter of The Manzanar Fishing Club The Wild Impossibility dazzles on every page, with its wonderfully rich prose and layered story. Cheryl Ossola goes many levels below the surface, showing how a present life is infused with the past, how hearts are broken and mended, how at some level, there is no such thing as a past or present at all. It's a novel that will have its way with you because Ossola is such an accomplished writer. --Nina Schuyler, author of the award-winning novel The Translator Ossola walks a wonderful wire here, sculpting a story that's readable and timely. The novel honors its history with austere accuracy, and Ossola captures her characters' complex emotional trajectories in gusts of poetry. --Joshua Mohr, author of the novel All This Life The Wild Impossibility weaves together multi-generational, multicultural love stories that bear timely witness to our depths and heights as people, as nations, and invites us to ponder what's possible in ways crushing and uplifting. Sensual. Heartful. --Ethel Rohan, author of The Weight of Him In lyric prose Cheryl Ossola takes us on an exhilarating journey, as Kira Esposito becomes a relentless detective of her dreams in a search for origins. Readers will time-travel on switchback trails, from Kira's 21st-century life with her husband to a Japanese interment camp in the 1940s--and back again. Ossola's stunning descriptions of the landscape ground us in a vivid a sense of place and the porous boundaries between time-realms create engrossing tensions in Kira's marriage. Ossola is masterful at showing the connection between dreams, quantum labyrinths, and daily life. By the end of this book you will be a seasoned time-traveler. --Thaisa Frank, author of Enchantment and Heidegger's Glasses

Author Information

Cheryl A. Ossola is a former magazine editor, freelance writer and editor, and RN (neonatal ICU), with work published in Fourteen Hills, Speak and Speak Again, Switchback, Dance Magazine, and Dance Studio Life--and by San Francisco Ballet. A member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, she now lives and writes in Italy.

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