Cartographer of Sands

Jason Buchholz is the author of the novel A Paper Son (Tyrus Books, 2016), which Publisher’s Weekly described as “a gripping debut” and Booklist described as “wonderfully imaginative.” He is the co-founder of Collaborist, an editorial boutique that provides writing, editing, and educational services for aspiring and established authors. He was an editor and the art director of Achiote Press, and his poetry and short fiction have appeared in Gobbledegook and Switchback. He graduated from UC Berkeley and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of San Francisco. Jason lives in the East Bay area, California.

“Mesmerizing and magical, perfect from the first page to the last.”— Pedro Hoffmeister, author of American Afterlife"Masterful and wondrous. Each character, all of them thrumming with so much life they deserve their own novel, moves through this relentless, unique story into a finale that opens into the universe. The reader walks through virtually every bit of California’s differing landscapes alongside them, feeling every single moment. Cartographer of Sands is both a California novel and an American novel, and rich and true in both of those veins"—Lewis Buzbee, author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop"In The Cartographer of Sands, Jason Buchholz charts the tremors of a family navigating secrets, mistakes, and the unknowable depths of their ancestry. Told with a lyrical hand and an eye for sensory detail, the story unfolds with no signposts—just the raw, immediate experience of characters living through what they cannot yet understand. This is a novel where the mystical brushes up against the mundane—where visions bloom behind truck stops, and the sacred slips into the everyday. Rich in specificity and a profound sense of place, Cartographer explores the ripple effects of seemingly unrelated choices, the shifting lines of identity and purpose, and the maps we draw to find our way back to ourselves and each other."—Nikki Van De Car, author of The Invisible Wild