![]() ![]() ![]() Olaf College in Northfield, lives in Minneapolis with his wife, writer Cole Nagamatsu, in a house they bought during the height of the real estate boom. I was still deciding whether or not I would call myself a writer." But while he was in Japan, alone and isolated in a country where he barely understood the language, "I didn't think of this as a novel at all. The individual stories that he began writing there more than 10 years ago have become his powerful debut novel, "How High We Go in the Dark," which Nagamatsu will launch at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis on Jan. It's kind of a taboo subject, especially in the West." "We're not used to talking about death and mortality. I was also thinking about my grandfather. I was doing that exploration as well because it fascinated me. "So there are funerary skyscrapers, nontraditional ways that Japanese families are starting to embrace. "Japan is a country that is actively and increasingly dealing with what to do with the elderly population in terms of space and financial realities," he said. In Japan, he was surrounded by reminders of his grief. ![]() "My grandfather's death had a profound impact on me," Nagamatsu said in a recent interview from his home in Minneapolis. In 2007, after the death of his grandfather, Sequoia Nagamatsu flew off to Japan, where he had never been, to teach English and to grieve. ![]()
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