Supersonic

Thomas Kohnstamm

ISBN 10: 1640097627 / ISBN 13: 9781640097629

Published by Counterpoint, 2026

About this Item

When PTA president Sami Hasegawa-Stalworth petitions to rename a Seattle elementary school after her late grandmother, she ignites a battle over the school's future and the history of its surrounding neighbourhood. Supersonic launches readers into a kaleidoscopic tale of the generations of interrelated families who breathed life into that small, hilltop community. The story cuts in time from the arrival of white settlers' ships to the last indigenous landowner fighting to hold on to scraps of his ancestral home and back to the school's PTA auction. It interweaves an opioid-addicted nineteenth-century con man-cum-civic booster, a disgraced Navy seaman building an airplane that travels faster than sound, a stay-at-home dad hustling to open the city's first legal weed shop and Sami's grandmother, a Japanese internment survivor who founded the school's once-celebrated music program. The novel traces their false starts, triumphs, and heartbreaks through the booms and busts of the Yukon gold rush, the jet age, Big Tech, and beyond. By exploring the converging and often clashing personalities that make up the dynamic soul of a place, Supersonic illuminates themes of identity, displacement, destruction, and reinvention that give rise to all great American cities.

Seller Inventory # 00105159675

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Supersonic
• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1640097627
• ISBN 13: 9781640097629
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

“Masterfully rendered and mercilessly readable. Kohnstamm populates these pages with insight, hilarity, emotion, and unforgettable characters. Supersonic is a novel with so much narrative propulsion that it manages to live up to its name.” —Jonathan Evison, author of Small World and Lawn Boy

When PTA president Sami Hasegawa-Stalworth petitions to rename a Seattle elementary school after her late grandmother, she ignites a battle over the school’s future and the history of its surrounding neighborhood. Supersonic launches readers into a kaleidoscopic tale of the generations of interrelated families who breathed life into that small, hilltop community.

The story cuts in time from the arrival of white settlers’ ships to the last indigenous landowner fighting to hold on to scraps of his ancestral home and back to the school’s PTA auction. It interweaves an opioid-addicted nineteenth-century con man–cum–civic booster, a disgraced Navy seaman building an airplane that travels faster than sound, a stay-at-home dad hustling to open the city’s first legal weed shop and Sami’s grandmother, a survivor of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, who founded the school’s once-celebrated music program.

The novel traces their false starts, triumphs, and heartbreaks through the booms and busts of the Yukon gold rush, the jet age, Big Tech, and beyond. By exploring the converging and often clashing personalities that make up the dynamic soul of a place, Supersonic illuminates themes of identity, displacement, destruction, and reinvention that give rise to all great American cities.

About the Author

THOMAS KOHNSTAMM was born and raised in Seattle and still lives in the same house he grew up in—now with his wife and two children. He’s a career-long freelance writer and has run his own video and animation studio for over a decade. Supersonic is his third book.