The Heart of It All

Starred review from July 3, 2023
Kiefer’s sublimely crafted latest (after Phantoms) explores the contradictions and struggles of life in a small Ohio town during the Trump administration. Tom and Sarah Bailey have just lost their six-month-old son to a heart condition, a tragedy that sets the novel’s tone and brings its various characters together: “Death brought casseroles... many warm from the oven, others cold so that their foiled tops wept with moisture,” Kiefer writes. The cast includes the two older Bailey children, who navigate the vagaries of adolescence in a place where everyone knows each other’s business; Khalid Marwat, the Pakistani owner of the transformer parts factory where Tom works as foreman; Khalid’s wife, Rafia; and their son and daughter. The Marwats face routine bigotry (at one point, their property is strewn with toilet paper by neighbors who embrace Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric). There’s also Mary Lou, the factory's administrator, who is overweight and unhappily living with her mother, and Paula, one of the few Black people in town, who is passed over for a deserved promotion at the local Kroger's grocery store. In chapters from alternating points of view, Kiefer touches on themes of friendship and animosity, love and abuse, faith and racism, showing how the characters are bound together and driven apart by their circumstances. It’s an exquisitely wrought and insightful look at how people deal with misfortune and inequities. Agent: Eleanor Jackson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.

August 1, 2023
Kiefer's (Phantoms, 2019) fifth novel is set in a small, disintegrating Ohio town and centers on three families living vastly different lives. The Baileys are a white family with a long history in the area, grieving the loss of their six-month-old baby. The Marwats are immigrants from Pakistan who own an electronics factory that employs many townspeople. And the Shaws are a Black family out of place in this blue-collar, predominantly white community. Readers are intimate bystanders to the unique hardships faced by each of the novel's characters, even as the book paints a world in which pain is a universal experience. Bouncing between different points of view, Kiefer successfully gives each character a distinct voice and place within the mundane town, allowing their struggles to be just as important as their neighbor's. The writing is thoughtful and at times uncomfortable, particularly the instances of vitriolic and inhumane racism. This book is a sincere attempt to remind us that, at the end of the day, we are all human.

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Starred review from July 1, 2023
An Ohio town's economic decline highlights the woes and ties among families. Kiefer opens his fourth novel with a crisp clause: "Death brought casseroles." Friends and co-workers hope food will ease the pain of Tom and Sarah Bailey, a white couple who have just buried their 6-month-old son. The cause, and a piercing image: a hole in the heart. Tom's Pakistani immigrant boss, Khalid Marwat, whose small electronics plant is the town's chief employer, privately gives him $500. As the novel moves from autumn to spring in the time of Trump's MAGA promises, Kiefer reveals the strains of a town barely afloat, its people living from paycheck to paycheck, piling up debt, fighting shame, seeking relief in small pleasures while hope frays. The problems aren't original--the book recalls Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool, among other blue-collar elegies--but Kiefer has a sympathetic and probing eye that gives his characters solidity, kindling empathy and anxiety. Some sort of crisis seems to loom at every turn. Paula Chapman, "the only Black woman in town," takes in her 19-year-old nephew, Anthony Shaw, so he can escape Cleveland's street violence. The police later mistake him as a threat to Tom Bailey's 17-year-old daughter, Janey, who is walking nearby; the young people soon start secretly dating. The shadow of racism returns when Tom rebukes a co-worker for referring to Khalid by the worst epithet. Janey's brother, Charlie, is worried about a schoolmate whose brutish father seems capable of anything. The plant's office manager copes with an abusive mother. There's enough potential for disaster to keep a reader wondering when something will blow. No easy solutions seem likely. And yet, death brings casseroles. Kiefer knows kindness can help heal all sorts of wounds, maybe even a hole in the heart of a town. At least for a time. A thoughtful look at those just getting by from a writer who deserves to be known.

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