The Californians: A Novel

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 digital community art, 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. It's a risky move, but his father barely seems to like them—as long as Tobey can remember the artworks lived in the shadows of a hallway or partially obscured by furniture. Still, Di Stiegl has always been a touchy subject in his household, and he doesn't quite know why. 

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 them is the story of Diane “Di” Stiegl: Klaus’s granddaughter and the woman whose art seems to haunt Tobey's father, 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.