“Buchholz’s gripping debut is a clever supernatural thriller that plays with readers’ narrative expectations. Rich, interesting characters fill this fast-paced, magical realist novel about family connections.”
— Publisher’s Weekly

“The rain will not stop falling on San Francisco. Third grade teacher Peregrine Long…begins to write about Li-Yu, the daughter of Chinese immigrants to America who travels in the 1920s to her husband’s home in China. …Peregrine thinks he’s creating her story…but an older woman shows up on his doorstep demanding to know why he is writing about her family history. That is only the beginning of a series of strange events that envelop Peregrine, his sister, and his girlfriend in this wonderfully imaginative novel. Buchholz constructs a world that is both familiar and strange, where magical events are layered on top of the everyday, the distinction between them not always clear. The mystery of the story, while a powerful driver of the book, becomes almost secondary to the wonder of it all.” 
— Booklist

“...a prophetic and engrossing supernatural thriller examining how memory surfaces after a near death experience...a richly woven and haunting tale of memory, loss and identity, in which the ocean serves as the bridge that separates and binds the two distinct timelines together. A Paper Son is a magical journey through memory and history, with Peregrine acting as the medium for voices that were silenced and lost in the pre-World War II immigration void. What makes Buchholz's debut sing is not the mystery, but how the characters handle and rise above their exceptional circumstances to come to terms with a painful and forgotten period of Asian American history.”
— Shelf Awareness

“A Paper Son is a rivetingly imaginative debut full of deft humor and an affinity for the peculiar reminiscent of Auster and Calvino.”
— Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune

“Buchholz’s first novel showcases an imagination turned up to 11. I dig books that keep me guessing, keep me gasping with every new page, each new reveal that contorts Realism into something vitally new. I was wonderfully off balance reading A Paper Son. You’ve never experienced anything like this.”
— Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life

“A Paper Son is a fascinating exploration of blurred lines. Lines blurred between the past and present, of the real and imagined, of yearning and deliverance. A fine debut by Jason Buchholz.”
—Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times Bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins