At age thirty, Kyle Boelte finds himself living in San Francisco, where
the summer fog blows inland off the ocean and the landscape changes
moment to moment. Amidst this ever-changing sea of fog, Boelte struggles
to remember his brother Kris, who committed suicide in the family's
Denver home when Boelte was just thirteen.
In this impressive debut, Boelte sets up a dual narrative: one
investigates San Francisco's climate to explain the science behind the
omnipresent fog; another explores Boelte's memory as well as letters,
notes, newspaper articles, and other artifacts that tell the story of
his brother's short life and eventual suicide.
Weaving a complex and engaging story from personal, historical and
environmental threads, Boelte's search for meaning takes him to a range
of unexpected places: from San Francisco Bay circa 1901, when fog was
responsible for routinely sinking steamships, to a cavernous medical
library where he studies the grim details of asphyxiation and death by
hanging; from the redwood forests where scientists are now learning
about fog's ability to sustain life, to a beat-up cardboard box
containing memories of his long-dead brother.
The Beautiful Unseen is as much a meditation on experiencing loss at
an early age as it is a study
