Mitch Wieland, a full professor in the creative writing program, sold his third novel, “The Ghosts of Okuma,” to Regal House Publishing. Named Independent Publisher of the Year in 2021, Regal House Publishing partners with the Gotham Group in Hollywood over film and TV rights. Publisher’s Marketplace announced the deal on September 9th. Charles Baxter calls “The Ghosts of Okuma” a “wild ride that leaves you breathless.” The novel received early praise from Joy Williams, Andrea Barrett, Anthony Doerr, Madison Smartt Bell, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Ridley Pearson, Marion Dayre, and Brady Udall.
A modern retelling of Shōgun
In “The Ghosts of Okuma,” a teenager from San Diego searches the streets of Tokyo for his runaway sister. The young American soon befriends a mysterious but charismatic Fukushima refugee, who agrees to help him track down his sister in exchange for joining her solo crusade against nuclear power. “In my mind,” Wieland says, “The Ghosts of Okuma could be a modern retelling of Shōgun, if the English sailor was a teen stoner from San Diego and Lady Mariko was a rebellious Japanese high schooler named after a Flaming Lips song.”
About Professor Wieland
Wieland lived in Tokyo from 1986 to 1991. In 2012, he spent two months in Japan researching the novel on a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a year-long fellowship from the Boise State Arts and Humanities Institute.
Wieland’s first novel received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist, as well as high praise from The New York Times and Kirkus. His second novel, a top finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award, became Idaho Book of the Year, earning an endorsement from Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford. His short stories appear in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Best of the West, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, and The Sewanee Review, among numerous other journals. Wieland received grants from The Christopher Isherwood Foundation, The Idaho Commission on the Arts, The Cabin, and The Alexa Rose Foundation.
The founding editor of the award-winning Idaho Review—publishing writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle, Ann Beattie, and Rick Moody—Wieland co-founded the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Boise State. He has taught at Boise State for twenty-eight years. Currently on sabbatical from Boise State, Wieland is at work on a screenplay adaptation of “The Ghosts of Okuma.”
You can read more on the website for Regal House Publishing here.