In the Lap of the Gods
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
"An important, even invaluable book, a moving farewell to the old, more humane way of life as China and all the world become technologized and globalized."—Maxine Hong Kingston
A dam rises on the Yangtze, uprooting a million lives in a government-made, modern environmental and human rights disaster, and a poor salvager who has lost everything finds an abandoned baby girl. A tale of defiance, of a lost man finding his place—and a new kind of love—in modern China, and of a rich man reclaiming his soul and the woman he loved before the revolution tore them apart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lovett's evocative novel portrays widower Liu Renfu, a day laborer turned scrounger, caught in the Yangtze dam breach, part of the Chinese government's relocation plan. Liu braves the terrifying waters, alone, after losing his family, searching for items to sell. "The river showed no mercy. It swallowed the landscape in slow, heaving gulps. The surrounding fields had all but disappeared, digested over the course of the day in a pulpy mass." In his search, Liu discovers an abandoned infant and saves the child from drowning. The baby, who he names Rose, becomes his charge, despite Liu's meager circumstances. In his scavenging, Liu also uncovers an item that is precious to Fang Shuping, a successful local businessman whose yearning for the past forces him to confront contemporary injustice altering his life in the process. Lovett's complex tale of displacement and hardship, contrasting modern China with its past, highlights the human spirit's capacity for renewal.
