The Weather Outside

“I laughed, I cried, I ate borscht.”

-Hannah Tinti

What is Red Weather?

As Hannah Tinti (editor of One Story Magazine) also says:

“In Red Weather, Pauls Toutonghi introduces a wonderful new character to the world of fiction—Rudolfs Balodis—a hero, a thief, an ex-communist, an alcoholic, a janitor, a Latvian, a singer of the blues and above all else, a father.”

Who is Pauls Toutonghi?

Or as Darin Strauss (Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy) writes:

“Pauls Toutonghi is such an original, it seems almost blasphemous to try comparing him to others, but here goes: Gary Shteyngart meets David Sedaris meets Frank McCourt. In other words, he’s whipsmart and hilarious and Red Weather is a guaranteed knockout.”

Or Adam Langer (Crossing California, The Washington Story):

“Pauls Toutonghi’s humor is imbued with a rare generosity of spirit. And, with his debut novel, he has written a moving and entertaining love letter to youth, to family, to his heritage, and, perhaps most important, to Milwaukee, a city that is woefully underrepresented in contemporary fiction.”

Or Ken Kalfus (Thirst, PU-239, The Commisariat of Enlightenment):

“Pauls Toutonghi’s vibrant first novel, lyrical and rich in human insight, celebrates the essential experience of the first-generation American — whose struggle for full nativeness is always joined within the dizzying, tragic and exuberant campaign to become an adult.”

But — the book — what’s it about?

The setting is Milwaukee, Wisconsin – if not America’s heart, then at least its liver – home to an array of breweries and abandoned factories and down-on-their-luck Eastern European immigrants. The year is 1989. As Yuri tells us:

“In Latvian, Balodis means pigeon. We were a small roost of Soviet immigrant pigeons – just the three of us – huddled together amid the urban decay.”

Revolutions are sweeping through the nations of the Eastern Bloc. Communism is unraveling. And nobody feels this unraveling more piquantly than Yuri – whose parents mortify him with their stubbornly foreign accents and habits.

But when Yuri falls in love with Hannah Graham – the daring and dangerous daughter of a prominent Milwaukee socialist – chaos ensues. Within weeks he has joined the staff of the Socialist Worker, and his ideological betrayal will have more serious consequences than breaking his parents’ hearts.

RED WEATHER is by turns funny and bittersweet, tinged with a rueful comic sense that is at once reminiscent of Michael Chabon’s THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH and Khaled Hosseini’s THE KITE RUNNER.

It was published by Shaye Areheart Books (a division of Random House) in 2006. The hardback just came out. 

If you’d order the book, you can! It is available at amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s Bookstore, and BookCourt. Or, use the independent bookstore locator at BookSense to find an independent bookseller near you: Click here.