Little, Brown and Company, 2026
By Tom Lin ’18
A saga about a Chinese couple trying to eke out a living on their Dakota farm, which takes a supernatural turn when the U.S. Army builds a nuclear missile silo on their land.
“Called to this distant land by the death of an unknown kinsman and the promise of a new life came Hsiu Keng and his wife, Lee Mei, thirty-seven and thirty-three, who owned together but one suitcase full of clothes and an old leather knapsack filled with treasures that had survived the furor of the revolution: untranslated documents attesting to their births and marriage, three and a half misshapen taels of gold, a jade pendant carved into the shape of a monkey, a red coral bracelet too small for either of their wrists, a little booklet of family photographs, a transistor radio, and a silk bag of chrysanthemum seeds. They took possession of one hundred and sixty acres of soil that sloped, south to north across folded ridges, down to an overgrown pasture.”