Flashlight

PRE-ORDER FOR JUNE 3, 2025

Flashlight by Susan Choi

From Pulitzer Prize Winner Susan Choi — A Literary Family Mystery Illuminating the Shadows of Memory, Identity, and Disappearance

How do you hold on to someone who vanished in the dark?

One fateful night on a Japanese beach, ten-year-old Louisa walks beside her father, who carries a flashlight—and who, by morning, is gone. She survives. He disappears. What begins as a mysterious vanishing becomes a haunting puzzle that unravels across decades, cultures, and generations.

In Flashlight, Susan Choi—award-winning author of Trust Exercise—delivers a gripping and emotionally resonant novel about a fractured family still reeling from a single, traumatic night. Told in richly layered chapters that shift perspectives and peel back hidden truths, the story explores the lifelong impact of loss, identity, and secrets left untold.

Louisa’s father, Serk, a Korean man born in postwar Japan, carries a legacy of dislocation and disconnection. Her American mother, Anne, has severed ties to her own past. And the return of Tobias, Anne’s estranged son from an earlier life, sets off ripples that bring buried truths to the surface.

As the mystery of Serk’s disappearance deepens, Flashlight asks:
How do we live with what we can never fully understand? And how do the echoes of history shape our present lives?

🔦 A literary novel of memory, grief, and intergenerational trauma
🔦 For fans of Min Jin Lee, Celeste Ng, and Hanya Yanagihara
🔦 Explores Korean diaspora, postwar displacement, and the legacy of absence

Format: Hardcover
Genre: Literary Fiction, Family Saga, Cultural Identity, Mystery
Themes: Disappearance, memory and trauma, identity across generations, multicultural families
Audience: Readers who love emotionally layered novels with shifting perspectives and psychological depth