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A Novel
by Tom Lin
Book Reviewed by:From the author of the Carnegie Medal in Fiction winner The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu comes a tantalizing, American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a powerful, mysterious, and morally dubious military secret shapes their lives.
When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara.
But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu's farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America's nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.
In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of "strangers in a strange land" to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.
Shortly after the birth of their daughter Mara, two US government officials take advantage of the Hsius' poor English to buy an acre of their land to be used for a military facility, an event that catapults the plot. During and after the construction of the silo, strange happenings take place in the household: Mei has visions of the future, Mara speaks to animals, Saul has nightmares so severe that the only cure is for him to be in a sleep-like coma for months. Soon we are transported into a story full of alternate realities and magical absurdity. But as enthralling as the many plot turns are, it is the characters who are the real heart of the novel, and Lin makes sure of this by narrating with painstaking detail the entire history of the family. In a book full of secret government experiments and spies and magic, it is fascinating how Lin manages to push all that to the side and concentrate on the immigrant experience first and foremost.
Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams and An Oral History of Atlantis
I loved this novel, which was so transporting that I forgot to look at my phone...Lin's gossamer prose is patient and full of wonders. Paige Lewis, author of Canon
Tom Lin has written a flawless novel that belongs in a category all its own. The prose is so precise, so vivid, that even everyday objects seem fantastical, invented just for this world. I'll never be able to look at stained glass, or chrysanthemums, or even binoculars without being immediately transported back to Babylon, South Dakota. I'd die for—I'd go to another world for—Santui.
If you liked Babylon, South Dakota, try these:
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