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A Novel
by Brian Castleberry
For fans of Trust and North Woods, a daring novel that spans 100 years of American history, from the early days of cinema to the rise of NFTs, about parents and children, the drive to create even in times of crisis, and the inheritance of grand western dreams.
It's 2024, and Tobey Harlan—college dropout, temporary waiter, recently dumped—steals from the wall of his father's house three paintings by the venerated and controversial artist Di Stiegl. Tobey's just lost everything he owns to a Northern California wildfire, and if he can sell the paintings (albeit in a shady way to a notorious tech bro) he can start life anew in a place no one will ever find him, perhaps even Oregon.
A hundred years before, Klaus Aaronsohn—German-Jewish immigrant, resident of the Lower East Side—inveigles his way into a film studio in Astoria, Queens. In love with silent cinema, Klaus will restyle himself Klaus von Stiegl, a mysterious aristocratic German film director. In true Hollywood fashion, he will court fame, fortune, romance, and betrayal, and end his career directing Brackett: a radical, notorious 60s-era detective show.
Weaving between Tobey and Klaus is the story of Diane "Di" Stiegl: Klaus's granddaughter, raised in Palm Springs, who claws out a career as an artist in gritty 1980s NYC. As America yields the presidency to a Hollywood cowboy, as Diane's grifter father and free-spirited mother circle in and out of her life, Diane will reflect America's most urgent and hypocritical years back to itself, uneasily finding critical adoration as well as great fame and wealth.
A dazzling novel for readers of Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter and The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, The Californians is an ambitious and sweeping journey across a century. Nuanced and textured, gloriously funny, a critical portrait of the collective American consciousness that has brought us to today, it showcases Brian Castleberry as an inventive, stylish storyteller and a sharp observer of the human condition.
"Immersive, expansive, century-spanning, and deeply felt, Brian Castleberry's The Californians takes you on a ride through three generations of artists, capitalists, patsies, dreamers, cheats — Californians. It's a book that entertains and excites, a story of movies, of yearning, of how and why we make art, of how and why money both propels and traps, seduces and destroys. A story of failures and legacies passed down. A total pleasure of a book." —Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight
"It's hard to write something totally new, but Brian Castleberry has managed it. The Californians is a story within a story within a story—set across three distinct time periods and featuring an incredible cast of interconnected characters who are all trying to figure out how to make art and money and not let the making of one consume the other. Somehow Castleberry manages the spectacular feat of writing a novel that can be read forwards, backwards and sideways, and the result is a book I'll be thinking about for years to come." —Rachel Beanland, author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House is on Fire
"Exhilarating, profound, and pulsating with humor, The Californians illuminates something quintessentially American—the audacious pursuit of individual freedom, be it creative, moral, or monetary, which, although delusional at times, is enduring and possibly redemptive. This richly textured, nimbly narrated epic is a triumph. It will keep you spellbound." —Ye Chun, Author of Straw Dogs of the Universe
This information about The Californians was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Brian Castleberry's first novel, Nine Shiny Objects, was a New York Times Editor's Choice selection and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His other work has been published in the Southern Review, Narrative, LitHub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
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