Jason Buchholz: A Paper Son

A Paper Son is the story of Peregrine Long—a third-grade teacher in San Francisco who spends his evenings composing stories—who, just as a massive storm falls upon San Francisco, discovers the image of a Chinese family on the surface of his tea, thereby thrusting him into the center of a century-old mystery. Peregrine becomes an unwitting guide in a search for a stranger’s uncle that dates back to 1920s China. Along the way, he is reunited with his brash and self-righteous sister and joins forces with Annabel Nightingale—an exotic polyglot who teaches kindergarten during the mornings and spends her nights beckoning to ghosts ships and cataloguing their arrivals. A Paper Son is an exquisite exploration of the Pacific immigration experience that calls to mind Gabriel García Márquez and Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love.

Jason Buchholz is an editor, writer, and artist. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in Gobbledegook and Switchback. He holds a BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. He lives in El Cerrito with his wife and son.