DEBUT With visceral directness, Zhang opens her first novel with two children waking in a mining camp in the late 1800s American West and finding their father dead. As narrated by older child Lucy, various details emerge, if not explicitly; these children are of Asian ancestry, and the younger child, Sam, identifies as a boy but is biologically a girl. Discriminated against and destitute, the siblings flee with the corpse on a stolen horse; their flight finally comes to an end when they can bury their father. The book then shifts to their parents' backstory, unfolding the family's origins, their gold-fueled success, and their downfall when they lose their mother. The story then jumps forward five years, with Sam off adventuring as a man and Lucy acting as a companion to a wealthy white woman. Once they reunite, they set off to cross back to Asia, and on the way Lucy pays for Sam's freedom with her own. But at what cost? VERDICT This moving tale of family, gold, and freedom rings with a truth that defies rosy preconceptions. The description of human and environmental degradation is balanced by shining characters who persevere greatly. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/7/19.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

A first-time novelist explores timely questions about home and belonging in a story set during the gold rush in a reimagined American West.Even now, when most of what used to be the Wild West has begun to look like everywhere elsea few big cities spread out among sprawling suburbs full of chain restaurants and strip malls, connected by interstate highways and digital networksa mythic version of this part of the country endures alongside the reality. That there is a place where anyone can strike it rich or, failing that, at least live free is one of the stories Americans love to tell ourselves. Zhang plays with this duality in her brutally lyrical debut. Lucy and Sam's family left China for North America with the idea that their father, Ba, would become a prospector. The gold rush is over before they get there, though; he ends up mining coal instead. Sam's daydreams of being a cowboy exist alongside the naked racism his family endures, but the romantic wish to be an outlaw comes true when Lucy and Sam are forced to flee their small mining village after their father's death, taking his corpse with them because they lack the means to give it the burial that will let his ghost rest. As they travel through desiccated landscapes littered with the bones of tigers and buffalo, Lucy and Sam meet archetypes we think we know from Westerns, but they are stripped of romance. The journey of these two childrenand the backstories of their parentsforce us to confront just how white the history we've been taught is. Aside from fictionssome fanciful inventions, some hateful liesabout Native Americans, we don't hear much about the experiences of people of color and immigrants in shaping the West. Zhang asks readers to acknowledge a legacy we have been taught to ignore by creating a new and spellbinding mythology of her own.Aesthetically arresting and a vital contribution to America's conversation about itself. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Zhang's extraordinary debut, a beautifully rendered family saga, centers on a pair of siblings, Lucy, 12, and Sam, 11, who are left orphaned in the wake of the American gold rush. When their father--a former prospector and coal miner whom they call Ba--dies after a short, hard life of toil and drink, Lucy and Sam want to bury him properly, according to Chinese burial traditions. This means two silver dollars to cover his eyes, but it's two silver dollars the two don't have. Clever Lucy attempts to appeal to the townspeople's sympathy, but it's hotheaded Sam, armed with their father's pistol, who understands that it takes force to make things happen. With their father's decomposing body, the pistol, and a stolen horse, Lucy and Sam disappear into the hills. As they search for a burial site and look forward to a future for themselves, Lucy and Sam reckon with how gold, ambition, and desire shaped the lives of both their Ba and their beautiful, beloved, and long-departed Ma, whose womanhood never dampened her hunger and ambition, and how that greed has been passed down to them. Gorgeously written and fearlessly imagined, Zhang's awe-inspiring novel introduces two indelible characters whose odyssey is as good as the gold they seek. (Apr.)

Beijing-born, globally-trotted, San Francisco-domiciled Zhang "is still looking for home," her author bio shouts. That search for home--uncertain, elusive, just-out-of-reach--looms throughout Zhang's mesmerizing debut novel in which a family of four (which should have been five) never quite arrives. Avoiding grounding details--geography remains generally unnamed, centuries are literally Xed out ("XX62," Part One begins)--Zhang reveals as much through deliberate elision as meticulous storytelling. Somewhere in the American West, the Gold Rush has waned, coal mining is stifling, assumed foreigners remain suspect. Already motherless for three-and-a-half-years, 12-year-old Lucy and 11-year-old Sam become orphans when their Ba dies. Their need to find a "home" for Ba's remains becomes an epic quest that both estranges and unites them. Traversing decades through four succinct parts--sibling flight in XX62, Ma's plans in XX59, Ba's origins in XX42 and beyond, surviving adulthood in XX67--Zhang, just 29, writes with precocious assurance as she confronts the inseparable connections between lies, liars, and secrets; the barriers of language; the impossible price of family bonds, and the everlasting longing to find home.