Recent Reviews
Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins
The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 pushed a shocked America into WWII. Few Americans were unmarked by what followed. Marianne Wiggins’ epic new novel ‘Properties of Thirst’ immerses readers into the life of one California ranching family in the aftermath of the attack. The book is a poignant love story, a family saga, and a portrayal of political events shaping personal lives. ‘History will always find you’ is Wiggins’ persistent theme. The building of a Japanese American internment camp and the water wars of the Owens Valley are how history finds this corner of California.
The story is set in Lone Pine, a tiny town nestled between the Sierra and Inyo Mountain ranges where many Hollywood Westerns have been filmed. Mt. Whitney stands tall in the distance. This idyllic location is where Wiggins begins her novel.
Rocky Rhodes had inherited his father’s fortune when he was a young man and transformed himself from an elite educated Manhattanite to a rugged California rancher. He built a beautiful adobe home in Lone Pine for his bride Lou. They adorned their home with fine furniture, rugs, paintings, and bookshelves that included Rocky’s favorite authors: Emerson and Thoreau. When his wife died of polio, and Rocky’s grief was raw, his sister moved West to help him raise his three-year-old twins, Stryker and Sunny.
In the decades since Rocky had moved West, the Los Angeles Water corporation had been buying the water rights of properties around Lone Pine, making farming untenable. But Rocky won’t sell his water rights. Through litigation and civil disobedience, Rocky has been battling L.A. Water to save the land he loves. “You can’t save what you don’t love” is the opening line and another recurring theme. Rocky detests L.A. Water for diverting the Owens River to Los Angeles decades earlier. He had watched Owens Lake dry up, asthma rates rise, and wildlife habitat wither.
After Pearl Harbor, the citizens of Lone Pine learn that the United States government will build a Japanese American internment camp called Manzanar, adjacent to Rocky’s property. The government sends a young lawyer named Schiff to design, develop and manage the camp. Ten thousand Japanese Americans from San Francisco and other places in the West will soon be incarcerated. Schiff succeeds in building the camp but eventually loathes the injustice and covertly helps the Japanese Americans. The Rhodes family and the Lone Pine community must also decide how to respond. Meanwhile, Schiff falls in love with Rocky’s grown daughter, Sunny, a rancher, gifted cook, and compelling character.
Wiggins has created a remarkable novel. (All the more remarkable as she overcame a stroke to finish it with help from her daughter, Lara Porzak.) Wiggins sketches her characters in rich nuance and captures California’s natural beauty in reverent detail. Readers are transported into the ethos and spirit of the 1940s American West. Though the family story is front and center, Wiggins illuminates the environmental despoilment and racial prejudice that have plagued our past. ‘Properties of Thirst’ is a superb saga of this history that always finds us.
Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on September 23, 2021
San Francisco is the perfect setting for this tremendous, tragic novel by Nawaaz Ahmed. ‘Radiant Fugitives’ includes an eclectic mix of people, perspectives, and possibilities. In the microcosm of one fractured family, Ahmed explores the complexity of loving family members with divergent values and beliefs. Digging into one family’s disturbing dynamics, Ahmed links family conflicts to broader themes of sexuality, religion, and race. His novel captures the emotions that divide us and then delves into how these differences might be overcome.
The year is 2010. Seema Hussein is a forty-year-old Muslim Indian woman working for Kamala Harris’ campaign for Attorney General of California. Seema is about to give birth to an unplanned child conceived with her soon to be ex-husband, Bill. The novel’s omniscient narrator is their son, whom Seema plans to name Ishraaq. It is a surprising choice of narrator, but Ahmed makes it work.
Seema’s dying mother, Nafeesa, has traveled from Chennai, India, to be with Seema for the birth. Her younger sister Tahera, a doctor and observant Muslim, has also come to support her sister. The Hussein family has been estranged for fifteen years. In Seema’s apartment in the Mission, they cook, clean and talk about their lives. But the conversation is fraught as each woman attempts to avoid the emotional minefields of past grievances and present judgments. Hurt, betrayal and misunderstanding cloud many interactions. Nonetheless, moments arise when the sharp edges of their jealousies and resentments soften, and the tenderness of their love for each other is recovered.
Looming large is the patriarch, Naeemullah Hussein, who has not traveled to San Francisco for the birth of his grandchild. Naeemullah had doted on his daughters, especially Seema, who had basked in her father’s love. However, after Seema completed her Oxford education, her father sought to arrange her marriage. When she revealed she was a lesbian, he replied, “I’d rather have no daughter than one who makes me hang my head in shame.” Exiled, she moved to the United States, worked as an activist for South Asian queer organizations and eventually settled in San Francisco.
Seema’s banishment from the family initiated a cascade of conflict and emotional isolation. Tahera decided that she, unlike her sister, would adhere to the family’s expectations. She asked her father to arrange a marriage to an observant American Muslim. She relished replacing Seema as the favored child. Yet, her father derided her dedication to Islam. It becomes clear that Naeemullah’s narcissistic approach to love has caused a ripple effect of pain that required his wife and daughters to juggle their allegiances. Ultimately, Nafeesa regrets that she has never attempted to understand the struggles and sorrows of her daughters.
‘Radiant Fugitives’ also explores the ways that broader political culture affects individual lives. The novel tackles questions of faith, race and identity in our country’s political life. Of particular focus is Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Seema and Bill fell in love and married as they worked tirelessly for Barack Obama’s candidacy. As a Black man, Bill felt intense hope as he vigorously campaigned for Obama. Seema too was lifted by the poetry of the campaign, but the optimism of that moment faded. Obama’s pragmatism on many issues, including LGBTQ rights, disappointed her.
Using one family’s disputes and misjudgments as his canvas, Ahmed has painted a poignant family tragedy and a meditation on the wellsprings of conflicts. The story is adorned with verses from the Quran and writing from Keats, Wordsworth and Barack Obama. Obama best captures Ahmed’s theme, “All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort to find common ground.” Obama’s message for civic life could be Ahmed’s for family life. ‘Radiant Fugitives’ will inspire readers to seek empathy, withhold judgment, accept our flawed humanity and marvel at the miracle of being alive.
Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on July 29, 2021
Linda Rui Feng’s debut novel “Swimming Back to Trout River” is an exquisite meditation on love and loss in the wake of China’s ruinous Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. The book brings to life how repressive regimes create lasting emotional scars on individuals touched by their cruelties. The protagonists are vulnerable but resilient as they leave China to start anew in America. Their hopeful moments are few and fleeting as the wounds of the old world shape their choices in the new.
Feng, a former San Francisco resident and professor in East Asian studies at the University of Toronto, has written a book that’s not primarily about China’s politics. Instead, it is an evocative exploration of the inner life of specific immigrants and the burdens they carry with them.
The story begins in China in 1981 as Cassia, a young mother, abandons her 5-year-old daughter Junie at the home of her in-laws. The story of why Cassia leaves Junie unfolds slowly. Junie’s grandparents live in a small village, near a river, where they dote on Junie. Born without legs below her knees, Junie is not deterred by her disability. She is bright, inquisitive and loves her grandparents.
As Junie’s 12th birthday approaches, Junie’s father Momo, who is in the United States pursuing a graduate degree, writes that he will bring her to America to join him and Cassia. What Junie and her grandparents do not know is that when Cassia arrived in San Francisco, she did not proceed with her plan to meet Momo. She works as a nanny for a little boy, while Momo, many miles away, still hopes to reunite with Cassia and Junie.
Cassia and Momo met while working in a factory town in remote China. Both were traumatized by horrifying events during the Cultural Revolution; each witnessed terrifying acts of physical violence and emotional cruelty. Memories of the period remained too raw for them to share, and their emotional distance compounded over time. The birth of their disabled daughter exacerbated their separateness. Each reacted differently to her arrival. A subsequent and tragic life-changing event fueled their growing isolation.
As the story develops, it becomes apparent that although they left China, Momo and Cassia did not leave their personal demons behind. Their interior lives remain bound up in the anguish of their younger selves. By the end of the novel, we learn the secrets that haunt their lives. The narration artfully moves between past and present while the characters’ emotional complexity deepens.
A separate stream in the narrative revolves around Dawn, whom Momo met at university before knowing Cassia. A gifted musician, Dawn makes a mark in Momo’s life, inspiring his lifelong passion for music. Dawn, too, endured tragedy during the Cultural Revolution. While in San Francisco as part of a musical delegation from China, Dawn made the difficult decision to defect. Music’s ability to motivate, nurture and touch human souls is a prominent theme in the story.
Another powerful theme focuses on the Chinese word yuanfen, for which there is no English translation. The concept refers to the idea that invisible threads, which can be identified but not completely understood, connect people and events. Numerous examples of yuanfen create drama and tension as the novel crescendos toward its surprising conclusion.
I might have preferred a different ending, but this quibble doesn’t detract from the book’s extraordinary virtues. Feng, a gifted writer and storyteller, astutely and unusually conveys the role of emotions in determining life choices. “Swimming Back to Trout River” celebrates the power of hope, the interconnectedness of people, the constancy of grief and the complexity of love: together, a microcosm of the human condition.
