We’re Safe When We’re Alone

Son is real. Son was saved from a life he cannot remember. Son is a human in a mythical world of ghosts. This is what Father tells him.

Son has lived his entire life inside the mansion. He is a good child. He reads, practices piano, studies, and watches ghosts tend the farmland through a window in the attic. When Father decides it is time for Son to venture outside, Son’s desire to please Father overpowers his fear, and he must contend with questions he never wanted to face. What are the relentlessly grinning ghosts hiding? Has a ghost taken control of Father? What answers or horrors lie in the forest? And who will stop the mysterious encroaching shadows? Nghiem Tran’s debut inverts the haunted house tale, shaping it into a moving exploration of loss, coming of age in a collapsing world, and the battle between isolation and assimilation.

Publication date: September 19, 2023

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 4.5 x 7

Page count: 168 Pages

ISBN: 9781566896832

Nghiem Tran was born in Vietnam and raised in Kansas. He is a Kundiman fellow, and he has received degrees from Vassar College and Syracuse University. We’re Safe When We’re Alone is his first book.

A USA Today Bestseller

A Kansas Notable Book of 2024

An NPR Best Book of 2023

"This hypnotic and richly allusive novella can be read as a concentric poem that hints at both hope and inevitable endings."

—Thúy Ðinh, NPR

“Sentences function like arrows that land in the reader’s brain or stomach or heart, leaving the reader with piercing insights that reverberate long after the book ends.”

—Melissa Reddish, Necessary Fiction

“Haunting, mournful, and thought-provoking. Tran’s debut novella expresses the anxieties and fears that come with love, trust, loss, and the unknown.”

—Sammy Loree, Chicago Review of Books

“A spare and haunted tale of loneliness in a surreal world.”

—Kirkus

"A haunting and evocative reflection on the meaning of love and memory."

—Publishers Weekly

“Tran flips ghost story conventions upside down.”

—David Lewis, Barrelhouse

“Nghiem Tran’s first novella is a marvel: a moving, lyrical piece of prose that happens to be an unputdownable page-turner. He has created a magical world—in the mode of Gabriel García Márquez or Maxine Hong Kingston—that’s astonishingly real. Read it and feel yourself transformed, maybe even saved.”

—Mary Karr

“A haunting and mesmerizing debut. Part parable, part fairy tale, and part nightmare, it all seems distilled out of the deepest longing. Nghiem Tran is a powerful new voice.”

—Dana Spiotta