At the Heart of the Universe
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The story of two mothers and a father in love with the same daughter, Samuel Shem's At the Heart of the Universe is an epic novel set deep in rural China against the backdrop of an ancient mountain monastery during the time of the one-child-per-family policy. Inspired by the author's experiences as parent of an adopted child, it describes the drama of adoption and the journey of loss and rebirth that can happen when a daughter brings together her adopted mother and father with her birth mother high on a mountaintop.
Set in 1991 in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, as a Chinese woman abandons her one-month-old daughter in a pile of celery in a busy market, and then shifting to Changsha ten years later as the daughter returns with her adopted American parents, the story moves across southern China until, high atop Emei San, one of China's "sacred mountains" with a Buddhist temple, the four are brought together in the wilderness—a perilous and explosive time that unleashes their heartbreak and suffering and, remarkably, transcends it to shared compassion, and new beginnings.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This poignant tale from Shem (The House of God) introduces Xiao Lu, a Chinese woman who lived in Communist China during the 1990s, when the "One Child" policy dictated that second-born daughters had to be given away or worse, and the American family who adopted her daughter. Inspired by his own experiences as an adoptive father, Shem explores the cross-cultural terrain when the American family miraculously finds and interacts with Lu in a remote mountainous area of China. Pep and Clio Macy bring their daughter, Katie, to China to celebrate her 10th birthday. They warily watch Katie become increasingly attached to her birth mother, adapting to Chinese ways with astonishing facility. Shem is at his best detailing Lu's difficult family history, the impossible task of giving up her second-born daughter, and the circumstances that conspired against her, forcing her to leave her husband and first-born daughter and hide away in a desolate Buddhist retreat. Unfortunately, the story leans toward melodrama in the unlikely reunion and the events that follow, but it's still a heartfelt exploration of the meaning of family and how the bonds that link people surpass cultural, religious, and economic divides.
