Christina and the Whitefish

"Christina and the Whitefish is a joy to read. If Bruce Springsteen wrote fiction, it would read a great deal like this." - Dave Zirin, The Nation Magazine

The debut novel from award-winning filmmaker and author, Stephen Vittoria. This is a book for the moment-a heart wrenching tale about overcoming your demons and finding your people. Vittoria doesn't flinch in the face of painful subject matter. At its heart, Christina and the Whitefish is an antiwar, anti-empire narrative, one that underscores love and empathy.

It's 1994. Christina, a young Gulf War veteran struggling with PTSD and the loss of both parents, drives cross-country in a borrowed car, desperately seeking relief and redemption in Asbury Park, the seaside mecca of her childhood. It's a place well past its prime and reigned over by the self-proclaimed King of Asbury Park: The Whitefish-a disabled Vietnam vet, tavern owner, artist, and philosopher. It's here, on the Jersey shore, that a chance meeting leads to a profound and life-altering connection.

Rewind to the eighties: two girls, best friends, falling in love was something to be kept secret. Reaching adulthood, Christina and Jaime move to Las Vegas to escape prejudice and build a new life. Unable to cope with her parents' deaths and convinced she's doing the right thing for herself and her country, Christina enlists in the U.S. Army, only to find herself racked by a further and compounding wartime trauma.

Christina and the Whitefish is a powerful novel that questions the conventional treatment and care methods veterans receive in America's inadequate, pharmaceutical-driven system, bringing to light just how critical human connection is to wellbeing and survival. Christina and the Whitefish asks tough questions about how to love and when to leave, questions that reveal a critical truth: family can be birthed from circumstance. And then, even in the pain and the stumbling, if you don't give up-keep seeking and moving toward something better-friends and healing will find you-and love, no matter how battered, can endure even the darkest of times.