When nourished, the tendrils of plants can grow long, strongly grasping other objects and, in a way, connecting them. Other intangible things can forge these connections as well.
The metaphor of tendrils reaching out to find others is lightly used in the new novel, Swimming Back to Trout River, by Linda Rui Feng. In a story of several generations that reaches across the Pacific, from China to the middle of America, the tendrils of music, obligations and, of course, love stretch out to touch others.
Momo is an engineer who has traveled from a small farming community in China, located on Trout River, to a mid-American university. He looks forward to the day when his beloved daughter, Junie, and wife, Cassia, join him. He also remembers being a young university student who fell in love with music when he met a violinist, Dawn. Dawn grew up with her grandfather, who played Russian and classical music on the piano. His way of saving her during the Cultural Revolution nearly shatters her heart.
Momo's wife, Cassia, seems unemotional and unconnected to both her daughter and husband. But she was not always this way, and the passages where her past is revealed are devastating in their emotional clarity.
Junie, born without legs below her knees, is a beloved child being raised by Momo's parents in little Trout River. Momo is scrimping to make sure he can bring Junie to America to reunite his family by the time his daughter turns 12. But she adores her grandparents and is connected to Trout River the way all people who love their homes are.
The novel is only 260 pages, but has the epic grace of a much longer work. The impact of various political and social movements in China on individuals play their parts in the narrative. But they are not the main focus of the novel. The characters, fully human with complex hearts and yearning, are engaging from their first appearances. Feng also incorporates some of the most lyrical writing about music since The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor (in which a sentient bear educates the reader on love and music).
Feng also includes a section that discusses three untranslatable words, which go right to the heart of the characters and their stories. It is a section that shows the heart and mind of any discerning soul can be connected, and that they can reach out to others in ways to move other souls.
Although this is her first novel, Feng also has published short stories and poems. She is a university lecturer and is researching aromatics and a cultural historian researching spatial knowledge. Her fiction shows her knowledge of how to make characters and ideas connect.
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