Grief is a hard concept for many and to read it in a book sparks feelings readers are not ready for. Sequoia Nagamatsu uses that intense feeling to pull readers into his book “How High We Go in the Dark” and to create a sense of community around the hard topic.
On Oct. 30, Sequoia Nagamatsu came to Hamline for a Runestone interview done by Oracle member sophomore Alex Jaspers. Runstone Journal is a literary journal made up of undergraduate writers who review writing and put it into the journal. It is free online.
“How High We Go in the Dark” is a novel made up of short stories being told from different points of view during different time lines around this Arctic Plague that makes organs shapeshift into other organs before it kills them. Through this story, Nagamatsu explores themes of grief, resilience and the human spirit in his characters while blending it with fantastical and science fiction elements.
Grief is a huge part of this story and Nagamatsu explains that he has experienced a ton of grief in his life, but allowing his characters to make different decisions allowed him to cope with it better.
“Being able to write a fictional version of that [the passing of his father] allowed me to kind of play that out in real life and make decisions that my characters couldn’t,” Nagamatsu said. “I think one of the reasons why I wanted every chapter to not be a complete downer is that nobody wants that, but I felt like it was necessary to remind the reader that society was going to get through this.”
His book was supposed to be released in 2020, but with COVID-19, it was delayed, which actually helped him restructure his book, as he did not want his story to be about the plague itself but more of the grief his characters go through.
“There wasn’t much of the plague in the book at all for much of the life of the manuscript. It was mostly an exploration of grief and non traditional ways of thinking about how we say goodbye, especially tied to the funeral industry,” Nagamatsu said. “This wasn’t going to be a thriller that’s centering epidemiologists; not going to be centered around the virus but it was going to be the backdrop that provided the engine, the real world engine, that was ultimately still literary fiction.”
In the book, Nagamatsu makes many references to pop culture memes, shows like “Star Trek” and “The Twilight Zone,” and comic books. He also mentions that he was not able to add everything he wanted, like a Nicolas Cage reference, as his editor did not see the relevance in adding him to the book.
Nagamatsu’s book has been translated into over 12 languages and has been nominated for many writing awards. He also has one other book published called “Where We Go When All We Were Was Gone” and has another book coming out in 2026 called “Girl Zero.”
Nagamatsu is also a Creative Writing Professor at St. Olaf College and lives in Minneapolis.
Where hope meets grief is where a community can come together, and Sequoia Nagamatsu does an amazing job showing that in his book.
Per The Oracle Policy, Jaspers did not have any involvement in the writing of this article.
