Supersonic: A Novel

"Masterfully rendered and mercilessly readable. Kohnstamm populates these pages with insight, hilarity, emotion, and unforgettable characters. Supersonic is a novel with so much narrative propulsion that it manages to live up to its name." -Jonathan Evison, author of Small World and Lawn Boy "Masterfully rendered and mercilessly readable. Kohnstamm populates these pages with insight, hilarity, emotion, and unforgettable characters. Supersonic is a novel with so much narrative propulsion that it manages to live up to its name." -Jonathan Evison, author of Small World and Lawn Boy When PTA president Sami Hasegawa-Stalworth petitions to rename a Seattle elementary school after her late grandmother, she ignites a battle over the school's future and the history of its surrounding neighborhood. Supersonic launches readers into a kaleidoscopic tale of the generations of interrelated families who breathed life into that small, hilltop community. The story cuts in time from the arrival of white settlers' ships to the last indigenous landowner fighting to hold on to scraps of his ancestral home and back to the school's PTA auction. It interweaves an opioid-addicted nineteenth-century con man-cum-civic booster, a disgraced Navy seaman building an airplane that travels faster than sound, a stay-at-home dad hustling to open the city's first legal weed shop and Sami's grandmother, a survivor of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, who founded the school's once-celebrated music program. The novel traces their false starts, triumphs, and heartbreaks through the booms and busts of the Yukon gold rush, the jet age, Big Tech, and beyond. By exploring the converging and often clashing personalities that make up the dynamic soul of a place, Supersonic illuminates themes of identity, displacement, destruction, and reinvention that give rise to all great American cities.

About the Author :
THOMAS KOHNSTAMM was born and raised in Seattle and still lives in the same house he grew up in-now with his wife and two children. He's a career-long freelance writer and has run his own video and animation studio for over a decade. Supersonic is his third book.

Review :
"The Great Seattle novel has arrived." —Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of Same Bed Different Dreams "A splendid, centuries-spanning tale . . . The interconnectedness of the cast creates an addictive narrative tension, and Kohnstamm’s character work is top notch . . . Readers shouldn’t miss Kohnstamm’s heartbreaking saga.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review), A Spring 2025 Most Anticipated Literary Fiction Novel "The book is fiction, but it reflects the very real ethos of a city constantly reinventing itself through boom and bust cycles across generations." —Hans Anderson, KUOW-FM "The dialogue frequently sings and is generously punctuated with clever wit . . . Kohnstamm’s remarkable achievement is to so effectively address race, class, culture, identity, and power in such a compelling, entertaining read." —Booklist (starred review) "Thomas Kohnstamm will own it: He set out to write nothing less than The Great Seattle Novel. And in Supersonic, the 49-year-old Seattle native might have done just that, if only in its unprecedented sweep and scope." —Jim Thomsen, Post Alley Seattle "Supersonic operates as literary novels are meant to: it offers characters on both sides of a divide and allows the reader to design their own rooting interests." —Eric Olson, The Seattle Times "A born-and-raised Seattleite, author Thomas Kohnstamm nails the Seattle ethos in his sprawling, funny and deeply human third novel, Supersonic . . . Kohnstamm renders each character vividly and connects each of their stories in a satisfying, logical way. His 'regular folks versus corporate greed' storyline is reminiscent of some Carl Hiaasen novels—darkly comic and loaded with social commentary but not as over-the-top as Hiaasen or Hiaasen’s late colleague Dave Barry. In this, Kohnstamm stays true to his Seattle roots, smart and opinionated but slightly more low-key about it." —Christine Perkins, Cascadia Daily News "Kohnstamm’s characters are figuring this all out in internal monologues of abashment and fretfulness that are likely to elicit moments of laugh-out-loud empathy from the reader. The characters struggle through failed loves and foiled liaisons . . . This colorful tapestry of a plot holds together, and ultimately honors humanity over hubris." —Barbara Lloyd McMichael, Discover Our Coast “On the soul-of-the-city level, this is the best of all the Seattle books I know of. Supersonic is a huge achievement” —Fred Moody, author of Seattle and the Demons of Ambition “Supersonic exquisitely depicts intergenerational resilience and the human cost of progress. Heartbreaking, hilarious, incisive, and deeply relevant, Kohnstamm deftly interrogates the aspirations of a city vying for world-class status.” —Cynthia Brothers, founder Vanishing Seattle “A dazzling, expansive new vision of the West, Supersonic is both sweeping and intimate, spanning more than a hundred years on the land now known as Seattle and recasting westward expansion through the eyes of a vivid, indelible array of characters." —Maxim Loskutoff, author of Old King “Evocative of Richard Powers and Maria Semple in its scope, empathy, and humor, Kohnstamm's gift for distinct and unerring characterizations make Supersonic a truly epic novel of its place and time." —J. Ryan Stradal, author of Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club “Masterfully rendered, and mercilessly readable. Kohnstamm populates these pages with insight, hilarity, emotion, and unforgettable characters. Supersonic is a novel with so much narrative propulsion that it manages to live up to its name.” —Jonathan Evison, author of Lawn Boy