Don’t ask Portland novelist Michael Keefe what time period his new book, “All Her Loved Ones, Encoded,” is set in.
Better to ask what time period isn’t it set in.
Keefe will take part in a book launch at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 10, at Annie Bloom’s Books, 7834 S.W. Capitol Highway, in Portland’s historic Multnomah Village. Keefe has worked at Annie Bloom’s since 2000.
The novel is a sprawling, multi-generational story that follows the decisions, and their repercussions, of one family throughout the 20th century and into a dystopian 2057, where the protagonist, Kiana, is struggling through one hellish day to deliver a promise to her husband. Other segments of the novel take the reader to Kiana’s ancestors from 1940 through 2020, and into a few future years as well.
“I didn’t actually set out to tell a multigenerational tale,” said Keefe, 54. “In my original conception for the novel, Kiana was more of a Scheherazade character, and each of the tales she told contained part of a code. But it was more ‘clever’ than emotionally resonant.”