“A riveting novel of two heroic people attempting to transcend the prejudices of their time and place. . . . Skillful artistry and empathy.” —Ron Rash, author of Serena and One Foot in Eden
“Leung’s writing is exquisite, deceptively plain, deeply felt and spiritually high, with dead-on depictions of the world as it is.” —San Francisco Chronicle
From Brian Leung, author of Lost Men and World Famous Love Acts (winner of both the Asian American Literary Award and the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction) comes a story of forbidden friendship in an Old West mining town. Set amidst the racial tensions surrounding the Rock Springs Massacre, Take Me Home makes the desperate coal mine culture of Wyoming come alive. Readers of Annie Dillard and Annie Proulx will thrill for the latest book by this exciting voice in American literature.
Adele "Addie" Maine is returning to Dire, Wyoming, forty years after the deadly events that drove her away from her husband without a word.
Years earlier, when Addie first heads West to stay with her brother Tommy, she is wary of the Chinese working alongside the white men in the local coal mines. But when Tommy falters at homesteading and the mine becomes their only path, Addie's eyes are opened through her association with one Chinese man in particular, Wing Lee?and a bond forms between them that is impossible and forbidden, even in a territory where nearly everyone is an immigrant. Together, Addie and Wing harbor a secret, and when racial tensions escalate to a combustion point, Addie will face a devastating choice between fighting for what is right . . . and survival.
Take Me Home is a searing, redemptive novel that explores justice in a time of violence, and the sweeping landscape between friendship and love.
"Brian Leung's
Take Me Home is powerfully imagined. . . . [His] pristine prose recounts a time of tough women dealing with the loneliness of the Wyoming plains and the unforgiving landscape of an 1880s coal-mining town, a time when we were all immigrants in search of a place we could call home."
