The Immortalists

Klara is the second youngest of the Gold children and dies at the age of 31. She longs to escape New York and travels to San Francisco with Simon right after she graduates high school. Magic has always fascinated her, and she begins investigating it more and more after Bruna’s predictions. Klara aspires to be a magician, but while Simon’s dancing career soars, Klara struggles to get her act off the ground.

After Simon’s death, Klara continues performing and improving her act, and she also realizes her potential as an artist. The author notes of her, “Klara can turn a black scarf into a single red rose and an ace into a queen” (103). Klara begins a relationship with Raj, and the two have a daughter, Ruby. Despite the improvements in her career and relationship, Simon’s death plagues Klara:  “She’d lost both him and herself, the person she was in relation to him” (128). She abuses alcohol and hides it from Raj after Ruby’s birth. She begins to hear a series of knocks, which she believes to be Simon and Saul communicating to her from the afterlife, urging her to meet them.  

As time goes on, Klara succumbs to her addictions and allows fate to influence her. After moving to Las Vegas, she and Raj get a big break when Klara’s act is booked at a hotel. On the night of her opening, which is also the night of her predicted death, Klara hangs herself. She believes that she can bridge the divide between this world and the afterlife since she can communicate with Simon. In taking her own life, she decides to take agency in her own fate, believing “Klara won’t be a woman who is sawed in half or tied in chains—nor will she be rescued or liberated. She’ll save herself” (160). 

Daniel is the second oldest of the Gold children and dies at the age of 48. As opposed to his younger, more adventurous siblings, Daniel is more methodical and practical. He goes to medical school and becomes a military doctor. He does not believe in fate or the afterlife, and says, “In a way, I see religion as a pinnacle of human achievement. In inventing God, we’ve developed the ability to consider our own straits” (179).

However, when he is suspended from work, the world and order as he knows it falls apart. He explains, “Before today, men sought his counsel, asked for his consent: he was an oracle himself. Now, he’s indistinguishable from any other man, like a priest divested of robes” (187). When Raj and Ruby visit, Daniel becomes insecure about money and the amount of clout he has in the world.

To combat his guilt over Simon and Klara’s deaths, Daniel decides to take action once Eddie tells him about Bruna. Daniel feels he did not reach out enough to Simon and Klara, so he seeks revenge by tracking Bruna down at her trailer in Ohio. He goes on the date of his predicted death, suggesting that he is reevaluating his views on fate and the supernatural. He confronts Bruna, who insists that she is not a con artist and that people always came to her of their own accord. Daniel holds a gun to her head. Right before he shoots Bruna, Eddie shoots him. In this way, he either takes action or succumbs to fate—something that is unclear in the novel.