River of Dust A Novel

Thirty-one

G race sat bolt upright on the camel's back and could no longer pretend to be lulled or sleepy. She didn't care any longer about Ahcho's delicate feelings for his beloved master. She wanted to know the truth.

"Are you suggesting there's a connection between this accidental murder in the village of Yao dao ho and the kidnapping of our son?" she asked.

Ahcho's pace slowed, and he mumbled a reply at the rocky trail.

"Speak up, Ahcho. You must finish the explanation, much as it may pain you to do so."

"The Reverend became suspicious when he spied a torn scrap of his handkerchief in one of the kidnappers' pockets. Later, when I gave him the child's skull they had left behind, he became more concerned. Then, on our travels, we heard that amongst the people of the borderlands, the family, not the individual, is responsible for any crime. It seemed quite likely that your boy was taken out of retribution. But to what end, we did not know. So the Reverend did not give up the search. He wanted desperately to find his son."

"Or perhaps, what motivated him most was a desire to not face his own guilt," Grace said. "We'll never know."

"You do know, Mistress," Ahcho said. "You know he was a good man."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, I know he was. But the point is, he was a man— a flawed and miserable human like the rest of us."

"Don't blame him, Mistress. I should never have told you."

"Ahcho, it's good you told me. I'm actually glad to know my husband as he truly was— a far weaker and more imperfect person than I ever allowed myself to realize in his lifetime. But," she added softly, "who am I, a failed mother, to cast such aspersions?"

Grace wanted to think carefully about such matters so very much, and yet her mind was spinning. Blood whooshed in her veins, filling her ears with a desolate wind. The coughing began again, and Ahcho stepped closer and helped her remain balanced atop the camel as the paroxysms took her.

"Mistress should rest now," Mai Lin said. "We will stop, and I will give you something to help with the pain."

The coughing subsided, and Grace whispered, "No, we will press on until we reach our cottage. We can stay there for the night and then set out for Yao dao ho again in the morning."

Mai Lin sucked on her teeth and offered Ahcho an urgent, worried glance.

"I must tell you, Mistress," Ahcho said with sudden enthusiasm, "I have great news. Your boy lives west of here. I've heard word of him."

"Yes, yes, how wonderful," Grace said, but the dizziness and whirring circled her like the vultures overhead. She could no longer think clearly and badly needed rest. "You will tell me all about it later, Ahcho. I must sleep now. Really, I must. I'm dead tired."

So, as Grace dozed, they trudged along the sandy trail that cut through high grasses, climbing ever so slightly toward the foothills in the near distance. She loosely gripped Mai Lin's waist and shut her burning eyelids. When she opened them again, the Watson family cottage had come into view. She had not seen it since the morning after her son had been stolen from them. The path narrowed and became as rocky as a dry riverbed. She could not imagine how their buckboard had ever made the journey that first and only time one year before.

Grace's head bobbed as her illness lulled her back to sleep even on the lumbering beast. The fever was upon her. Her limbs felt impossibly heavy, and her neck could barely hold up her head. She dimly understood that she was far more ill than she had realized.

Then, in her cloudy, chimerical mind, she saw herself drift into the Reverend's study. Her white nightgown caught the moonlight that cascaded through the open window shutters. Her husband sat bent over his desk, as he had often done in the evenings. She tried to tell what year this was. The hunger in her gut gnawed away as much from fear as a lack of food. The famine had gone on for so many months. Yet when she looked down at her belly, she noticed that it was large. In her dream, she was pregnant with Rose. Yes, she could tell by the expression on her husband's face that little Wesley had been taken from them not long before.

Grace slipped closer to the Reverend's elbow and bent to see the sermon he was working on. To her surprise, he had left only blots of ink on the page and no words. He muttered something, apparently unaware of her. He took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes, and looked across to the high bookshelves as if he might find his next phrase on the spines of the leather-clad volumes.

The small skull sat on the desk before him, liberated from its hiding place inside the silk pouch with the twin golden dragons. On this cloudless, moonlit night, Grace saw it there and sensed that he used it to remind himself of his duty, his weakness, his sinful life, as stern a warning as Jesus's cross. Grace shivered at the sight of it. She wished he had just buried it long before in the desert where it belonged.

She followed the Reverend's gaze across the room and was startled to see little Wesley seated on the floor in the corner. He played with one of his Chinese cloth dolls. Over his pajamas he wore a padded and colorful Mongolian robe and hat that she didn't recognize. On his small feet were those darling silk shoes Mai Lin had brought him from the market. Grace thought it must be long past her son's bedtime, but he appeared busy and contented as he marched his doll back and forth across the blue carpet, using the branches of the woven cherry trees as a bridge to safety. He looked every bit the little prince that he was.

"That's a good boy," she whispered. "Let your father concentrate on his work. He has much business to attend to."

Grace rested her hand on her husband's shoulder. The Reverend started slightly, although, like Wesley, he did not seem to see her.

"Oh, love," he sighed.

It made Grace's knees weak to hear his trembling voice. "Yes?" she answered.

Although he couldn't hear her, he must have sensed a certain attentiveness surrounding him there in the shadowy study.

The Reverend spoke to the empty room. "There is so much yet to be done. But these people," he pointed with his spectacles toward the dark window that overlooked the courtyard, "they don't want us here. We try to bring our faith, but the desert will swallow our efforts in no time." He put his glasses back on. "It's all for naught. Such changes are coming, my love. I fear we had best heed the future and step aside."

Grace had never seen him in such despair, but of course he would feel that now with his beloved son so recently taken from them. Grace gently stroked her husband's arm and touched his fine red hair. She knew that nothing she could do would help erase the concern that clouded his brow or the weary look in his eyes.

"Grace," he whispered. "Dearest Grace."

At the sound of her name, her heart lightened. The Reverend was always so much alone with his mission. For him to remember her in a time of need was a victory of sorts.

"Why, Lord, in your infinite wisdom, did you take our treasure from us?" the Reverend asked, his voice suddenly rising and crashing against the bookshelves. "How can I carry on in your name when you're a wrathful God and not the tender, wise one whom I once believed in?"

His shoulders began to shake. Tears appeared in his strained eyes and fell onto ink-stained hands. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Grace could feel herself shaking, too, although she wasn't sure if it was from sorrow or joy. In the Reverend's sudden questioning of his faith, he became for her more beautiful and human than ever.

But now she saw that little Wesley was upset by his father's worried tone. The boy rose from the blue floral carpet, his handsome robe fluttering.

"Come, darling, everything's all right," Grace said and reached out her arms toward him.

The boy stood in place and began to wail.

"Come to Mother."

Grace slipped nearer to her son and put her arms around him but felt nothing in her grasp. It was air, all air, though still warm where his body had been. She tried to breathe into her congested lungs and hoped to capture his pure, sweet smell, but it was gone.

Grace awoke as the camel shifted unsteadily over the rough terrain. The body she wrapped her arms around was that of an old woman. Ahead, the Watson cottage rose nearer. It stood silhouetted against the endless blue sky as she had seen it on their first day here. From this distance, the surrounding scene appeared quite lovely, with the nearby river and the willow tree.

But as they came nearer, Grace could discern that the cabin was but a shell now. On the rough earth around it lay wooden boards, useless bricks, and scraps of metal. It had been looted, and the terrible desert weather had done serious damage to the structure as well. The walls of the house remained, but in places the roof had already caved in, and the glass of the windows had all been broken and gaped open to the winds.

"Let's go first to the river with the willow beside it," Grace said and pointed. "We can settle in at the cottage afterward."

The camel lumbered on until they stopped at the edge of the dry river. Ahcho helped her down from the beast. The wolf 's hide was most cumbersome, but she wrapped herself in it to control the shivers. Ahcho took her arm, and together they stepped down into the riverbed where the willow dragged its tendrils against cracked ground. She had remembered the branches as fuller and more protective but knew that she should be grateful the tree was still alive at all given the terrible drought.

"Please bring the trowel, Mai Lin," she said.

As her amah unpacked the satchel slung over the camel's side, Grace looked again at the plains. She and the Reverend had watched their futures rushing toward them across that expanse filled now with dried stubble and dust. She searched for smoke on the horizon but saw none on this clear, early-summer day.

Why had it happened? she asked herself again as she had so many times before. Only now, when she finally knew the answer, she sensed somehow that she had been asking the wrong question all along. Perhaps there was no question, just an acceptance of what was.

Grace untied the embroidered pouch with the twin golden dragons that hung from the dirty red sash. Mai Lin hobbled down into the riverbed and handed her the tool.

"Ahcho, do you mind?" Grace asked. "I believe the Reverend would be most grateful."

Ahcho took the trowel, bent down onto his knees, raised his hand, and struck the hard dirt. For some time, Grace and Mai Lin stood over him as he scratched and dug.

Standing in the river of dust, Grace held the pouch close to her chest under the great fur. She had learned from Mai Lin that each thing carried with it a life and a destiny that could not be ignored. She had learned to listen for portents sent on the wind and offered by the smallest of signs. Sometimes the future spoke to us with smoke on the horizon. Or with the dance of a handkerchief fluttering on the wind or a skull tossed down on firm soil. Each person and thing had its say and was of consequence. There was no way to undo the past or to correct the way things had gone, but attention must be given to the secrets whispered along the way. Ghosts spoke to us all the time, if we were only willing to listen. Not to do so was hubris. She could see that now and suspected that the Reverend had understood it in the end as well.

The shovel in Ahcho's hand chipped away at the hard-packed land, sending puffs of dust into the breeze. He paused to wipe his forehead with one of the Reverend's handkerchiefs. Grace could feel her husband here with them in each gesture of his devoted manservant. Her Reverend had not abandoned her but was with her still and would be always. The poor man had been so busy arguing with God, hashing out the ever-narrowing parameters of his faith, that he had quite forgotten to ask for her simple forgiveness. She wished he had understood that her love for him could have offered shade in the manner of the willow tree in all seasons and years. Ah, well, she would show him soon enough, when they met in the sweet by-and-by.

Ahcho finished the shallow, makeshift grave, and Grace wondered if she should say a few words. Bow her head. Offer a prayer. Something. But she decided that the time for last rites was long past. If anything, Mai Lin should mumble incantations as she had so many times over Grace's ill body before administering her potions. No, this skull needed no ceremony. It simply had to be gotten rid of expediently, returned to the soil where it belonged. It had cast its spell long enough.

She untied the embroidered sack, lifted out the child's skull, and placed it in the hole. Then, with her pale hands, she brushed the desert dirt back over it. The loess felt painfully soft in her fingers, like the silkiness of good, rich baking flour back home. Every week she had helped her mother prepare pies for Sunday supper. Today was a Sunday, was it not? Grace had lost track of so much— the days blending together and gone in a haze. And the loved ones, so many loved ones, gone, too, she knew now for good.

As the sun began to slice the horizon, she thought she could hear the voices of her family echoing down from the cottage nearby. Yes, it was the hour of Sunday supper, and she could hear the familiar rattle of silverware set down upon the table and the clink of glasses being filled by her mother's fine silver water pitcher. If Grace had been a good girl that week, she was allowed to light the candles. She glanced up at the house and expected to see it softly lit from within, but there was no light coming from that bleak cabin. She was far, terribly far, from home.

Shivers took her again, and her chest ached as the cough began. When it subsided, her body was soaked with sweat. Her skin was burning up, and yet she liked the heft of the hide on her shoulders. She finished the burial task and used the side of her hand to make the rough surface smooth.

She rose from the dusty riverbed and turned toward the cottage. Mai Lin helped her on one side and Ahcho on the other. She wished they wouldn't fuss so, but they continued to jabber their concerns as she shuffled forward.

"Mistress, truly I must explain to you," Ahcho said with great urgency. "The boy is out there. I heard about your son. He lives. And he is a prince."

Grace smiled. The old man worried far too much. Of course her son was alive out there. Of course he was a prince. "Yes, Ahcho, I know," she said, patting his feeble hand. "Thank you for telling me. I have known all along."

Then she stopped to cough and felt a swoon come over her. She may even have fainted. For in the next moment, she was at the base of the porch steps and Ahcho had her in his arms. The old man carried her up onto the porch, and she looked out at the horizon.

The blood-red sun hovered there, and the fields appeared bruised and painfully beautiful. This surprising beauty was why the Reverend had brought her here. She recalled his fierce and upright silhouette as he had stood against the setting sun. She had imagined him as fiery and pure as that red ball, his body bursting into a holy conflagration. It had not come to pass, although his bones would become one with this sandy soil soon. His ashes would turn to yellow dust. She looked down at her hands and saw that they, too, were already yellow from the loess.

The harsh land had won out in the end. Harsh but striking and filled with a strange history and life that could not always be understood but simply had to be accepted. The hills where he had traveled in search of their son rose in the distance, shadowed and purple. Ghosts were everywhere out there. They spread a lonely blanket over the landscape, as thick and impenetrable as the fur over her shoulders. They nestled deep into their ghostly sorrows, as she did into the heavy hide.

"You may set me down, Ahcho," she said softly.

"Madam does not wish to be carried inside?"

"I am perfectly all right," she said, and the coughing began again.

She stood and held on to Mai Lin. Her vision blurred momentarily but then returned. Even as she gripped the ancient flesh of her most trusted amah, Grace sensed she was alone. She had become as barren and as hollow as the house before her. There would be no more filling up of the heart.

The screen door hung before them on one hinge. The tired mesh flapped gently in the breeze. With all of her, she ached to have the Reverend beside her at that moment, although she was also glad that he had been spared this forlorn sight. She wondered, in the end, if he had come to believe in ghosts, as she had. That seemed possible, given the other changes that had come over him. And, if so, might he have allowed himself the comfort of imagining that their sorry cottage was inhabited by spirits now? Crowded with them, the setting might not seem so miserable after all. Perhaps she had been right to hear voices cascading down from the porch. She thought she heard little Wesley's happy cry now just inside the door.

As Ahcho held it open and Grace was about to step inside, she looked down and saw something tucked beneath the threshold. She knelt and found a copper coin half hidden where it must have fallen: an American penny, a young boy's treasure, now a gift to her.

Grace turned the dark coin over in her hand, examining it, squeezing tightly, hoping to feel something. Yes, her dear boy. He was here with her. Then, with trembling fingers, she placed it inside the pouch that had held the skull.

She stepped cautiously into the large, open room that had been stripped of the charming furniture that her husband and Ahcho had made prior to her first visit. Grace found herself drawn to the few items still left behind by scavengers. She touched the surface of things. She shifted a pot on the iron stove, traced the crack in a simple ceramic vase, and dragged a finger in a spiral over the dusty wooden mantel.

She could hear Mai Lin and Ahcho whispering to one another. They were far too worried about her. Mai Lin appeared at her elbow as she stood before the stone fireplace.

"Ahcho has prepared a mat for you. You must sleep, dear Grace."

Grace looked down at Mai Lin and was not surprised to hear the old woman's voice caress her name so sweetly. She had never been spoken to this familiarly by her servant, but now that seemed most right and appropriate.

"Yes," Grace said. "Sleep will be good. But first, help me with this, please?"

She opened the pouch again and gestured for Mai Lin to keep it open as she used her hand to swipe dust from the mantel inside. A yellow cloud rose from the embroidered dragon's mouth, and Grace tied shut the silk strings.

"Thank you, Mai Lin."

Grace felt satisfied. She had brought something to this distant corner of this distant land, and she would leave with something: an exchange of dust for dust.

Ahcho called them over to the corner where the children's cribs had once stood. The clever man had constructed a makeshift mattress from heaps of dirty straw there behind the tattered calico curtain. He patted it down, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

"Thank you, Ahcho. You have been most kind."

"It is not much," he said, his voice full of sorrow.

"It will do," Grace replied and let him help her down.

Grace lay still under the warm hide and listened to the gentle rocking of an overturned tin bucket on the floor. Weeds that grew between the floorboards rustled their dried pods. A breeze passed through the house with little resistance, issuing a hollow sound like someone's faint breath.

Grace took it all in: the wind and dust, the rising storm out there, the unsettled air inside. It was as the Reverend had once described it. A gentle, eerie peace settled over the place.

In the dimming light, she looked up at the sky through a hole in the roof. Earlier they had ridden under an achingly blue sky with pristine wisps of summer clouds. Now she could see denser clouds forming, low and tan and ominous.

"Is a storm coming?" she asked.

"A sandstorm, perhaps," Ahcho said. "We will be protected well enough in here."

"Good," Grace said. "Very good."

She did not sleep but remained alert and waiting for something. She could see out one of the open windows. The air had begun to swirl with crimson clouds. A storm was coming, no question about it, quite quickly from across the plains.

Grace shut her eyes, and in no time the first drops of rain fell. Water from the sky landed with a soft patter on the tile roof. She felt certain that this portent was auspicious. The future was most welcome, if seen in the right light.

Mai Lin lifted her head and made her drink from a small vial, Grace assumed to help her sleep.

"It's finally raining, is it not?" Grace asked.

Mai Lin nodded, or at least Grace thought she did. The storm had darkened everything, and night appeared to be descending fast. Grace glanced around the cottage and could no longer make out even the outline of the door. The screen flapped, and loose boards creaked. The air moved, and she swore she heard rain dripping from the eaves and spilling onto the packed ground. Out the window, she thought she saw great sheets of rain crossing the land. Soon the soil would yield to it.

But why weren't Mai Lin and Ahcho celebrating? The old pair had sat down with their backs against one of the cabin walls. They slumped against one another, and Grace blinked several times but could have sworn that she saw their hands intertwined on the gritty floorboard between them. My Lord, she thought, perhaps they were husband and wife. Maybe Mai Lin and Ahcho had been a couple all along. As the thought came to Grace, she chuckled to herself.

So little she and the Reverend had ever understood of what transpired around them in this strange land. How had they ever convinced themselves that they were anything but tourists? They were as ignorant as the most ignorant of coolies who eyed the white visitors with curiosity and fear. Grace's amusement at the way her Chinese servants had kept secrets seemed to lighten her heart and even her body. She could feel her limbs becoming less pained and her chest not nearly so burdened by the illness. Yes, it must be true about Mai Lin and Ahcho. There was love there all along.

How remarkable, but no less so, than the rain that finally fell here in this parched and blistered land. She listened for Mai Lin's snores and Ahcho's steady sleeping breath. When she was sure the two elders were asleep, Grace wished them sweet dreams and softly began to shift and move.

She pulled the great wolf hide around her and lifted the animal's jaw up over her head. As she sat up, she felt as small and light as a child under the enormous fur. If only the Reverend had not given it away, he might still be with her today. For Grace understood that the fur did offer true protection, though mostly against one's own fears.

She stood on weak legs and listened again for the rain. It continued to fall, and she was sure it was doing some good. She stepped slowly across the bare floorboards, opened the screen door, and stepped outside onto the porch. She paused before the broken-down railing where her husband had once stood and waxed poetic about the divine and mysterious landscape all around. In so many ways, he had been right. She did not regret for a moment coming to this land. For this rough place, with the help of the wolf hide now, had made her fearless. She was a modern American woman after all, striding into a future of her own making.

Grace stepped down the porch steps and into the rain, which was slowing now to a mere sprinkle. Her feet avoided the shallow puddles. When she looked up again, she saw her husband before her, a donkey trailing at his heels. The Reverend John Wesley Watson held the reins in one hand, an open book in the other. His steps were slow as he came closer, his head bent. His boots, long topcoat, and hat were covered in a thick yellow layer of loess. The Reverend squinted through his goldrimmed glasses, concern on his face. He stopped and surveyed their cottage, and Grace wanted to tell him not to be upset at the sight. They would make it right again. But he merely pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his glasses of the infernal dust.

The rain stopped altogether, and Grace turned up the dirt road and began to walk. Little Wesley toddled along not far in front of her. He kicked pebbles as he went. His colorful Mongolian robe caught the sun's rays, and she thought she heard the high tinkling of bells accom panying him. Amulets and talismans swung from his neck and around his waist. Grace was glad he wore a thick fur hat upon his golden head, for it would protect him in the desert climate. She picked up her pace to join her son, but the distance between them remained the same no matter how quickly she moved her feet.

Then she saw why the boy was maintaining such a rapid pace. He followed his father, who strode on ahead, his donkey left behind. The Reverend's footsteps struck the hard dirt, his march unfaltering. Here on the road to Yao dao ho, the Reverend seemed at peace, his gaze taking in the landscape that he loved. Grace trailed after her husband and their firstborn child.

As she walked, she vaguely sensed Mai Lin hovering nearby, pressing a loving hand on her chest and applying the most pungent of compresses. Why was she always administering to Grace? She wished to be left alone now. She was trying her best to hear the song that Wesley and the Reverend were singing. A hymn, no doubt, but which one?

The Reverend stopped singing and counted softly to himself, saying the numbers of churches or converts or perhaps only the calculation of successful crops a farmer could hope to garner in a good year. The number of fields ready to cultivate, enumerated with satisfaction. Grace was happy for him that he had forgotten his disappointments and grave mistakes and had returned to what he knew best: the land. He was born of farmers and remained a farmer in his heart. The Reverend seemed contented as he wiped the sweat from his neck with a handkerchief that bore his initials.

Grace watched as he accidentally let it slip from his hand. When he did not stoop to collect it, she hurried to retrieve it from the muddy road, thinking it might be useful on the journey ahead. Little Wesley traipsed right over the flimsy thing, still singing with his head flung back. A carefree boy on his merry way.

When Grace reached the thin white handkerchief, she scooped it up, but it slipped through her fingers and was lifted away again on the wind. A strong breeze off the desert was not unusual in early summer, Grace reminded herself, as she heard soft moaning and weeping nearby. Mai Lin and Ahcho made far too much of things. She wished she could tell them not to worry. She had found her son and her husband, and they were on the right road now.

Grace turned to watch a gust take the pale handkerchief and blow it further up the trail, where it twisted and hung in the air, finally drifting over an ocean, a vast and white-capped sea. There on a steamer stood a proper and upright couple at the prow. They each held the hand of a small girl, a toddler somehow now, although when Grace had last seen her she had been but a babe in arms. Still, the couple kept the girl between them and pointed out at the endless water and squinted. Grace did so, too, and thought she could just make out America on the horizon.

The handkerchief danced in the swift breeze around this new family, but it was the child who spotted it and reached up to catch it in her small hand. She touched the worn, soft fabric to her cheek, and Grace realized that she could turn away now.

She gazed up the dirt road that led west from Shansi Province. On and on the land rolled, eventually arriving in the great Gobi Desert. The Reverend had told her how remarkable it was to come upon a section of the Great Wall, or the famous Ming Tombs, or the extraordinary monoliths known as the Sand Buddhas. Farther beyond those sights lay the tribal provinces where men in woven costumes herded sheep at the edge of steep cliffs. Bent farmers tended verdant crops and orchards on stepped terraces. Nomads, not all of them rogues, roamed the unpaved byways, hopping rides on ferry barges that crossed forgotten rivers.

Her husband had seen all of this and more. Grace wished with all her heart that she had traveled with him on his many journeys. But it was all right now, for soon she would join him in that mysterious land ahead.

Grace set off, knowing well how far she had left to go. She didn't want to delay a moment longer. She marched with purpose in her step, a modern woman on a road less traveled, but no longer frightened because of it. Indeed, she felt quite grand as she walked on, deeper and deeper into the adopted desert of her dreams.



Author's Note



My grandfather, the Reverend Watts O. Pye, was amongst the first missionaries to return to Shanxi Province in northwestern China less than a decade after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. During his tenure in Fenchow as head of the Carleton College Mission and in conjunction with the Oberlin-Shansi Program, he helped build a hospital, roads, schools, and a library. I gather from Reverend Pye's journals that he was a fervent evangelist who recorded his success by the number of converts he made while roaming the region. He was the first white man to visit many of the villages and wrote with both humor and respect for the peasants he encountered. In romanticized prose, he recorded the stark and eerie beauty of the land. And while riding on donkey back over the rough terrain, he truly did read and recite aloud from the Romantic poets.

Reverend Pye and my grandmother, Gertrude Chaney, had three chil dren in Shanxi. Their two daughters died young. My father, Lucian W. Pye, was the only offspring to survive into adulthood. The Reverend Pye's death occurred when my father was five, the same year he lost a sister. Not long afterward, young Lucian suffered an illness similar to rickets that kept him bedridden with limp bones for a year. Gertrude, a strong Midwesterner, managed these trials and stayed on in the mission compound in Fenchow with my father even under Japanese occupation. A year after Lucian left for college in the United States, Gertrude was finally forced to abandon China on the neutral Swedish ship Gripsholm, which left from Shanghai after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She always wanted to return but never did.

My father soon returned to China as a translator for the U.S. Marine Corps, and thanks in part to the G.I. Bill, he studied at Yale and went on to become a prominent sinologist in the field of political science. He authored over twenty books on China and the postwar developing countries of Asia. He always said that political scientists were frustrated novelists, but I think he was just being kind to me— although his scholarly approach did center on hard-to-quantify subjects such as the Chinese political mind and spirit.

Although I have never been to China, I was steeped in its aura. I grew up in a household decorated with Chinese objects, and they carried with them the feeling of an earlier time. My grandmother Gertrude doted on me as the youngest, and together we held tea parties using her finest porcelains from Shanxi. Families pass down wisdom and pain often in equal measure, and I sensed my father and grandmother's losses in China. Like many American families, the earlier generations survived experiences that we can hardly imagine, yet strangely inherit. This book is a fictional expression of that distant, haunted time and place— one that exists in my mind and not precisely on any map.



Acknowledgments



Like many debut novels, River of Dust has many generous people behind its creation. I am deeply grateful to Greg Michalson for his insightful and wise editing and for deciding that this story was worthy of Unbridled's excellent name. Much appreciation, too, goes to my agent, Gail Hochman, for taking on this project with enthusiasm. I especially want to thank Nancy Zafris, brilliant author and teacher, for her invaluable help redirecting my energies so that I wrote this manuscript in particular, and also for seeing that it was read by the right person at the right moment.

For a number of years, I worked on a previous manuscript set partly in China. While that book did not find its way to publication, many kind friends read part or all of earlier incarnations: Margaret Buchanan, Patty Smith, Nathan Long, Susann Cokal, the late Emyl Jenkins, Rosemary Ahern, James Marcus, Kirk Schroeder, Phyllis Theroux, Brian Deleeuw, Meg Medina, Julie Heffernan, Jonathan Kalb, Kate Davis, David Heilbroner, Karl Marlantes, and Robert Goolrick. Additional authors Gigi Amateau, Leslie Pietrzyk, Belle Boggs, James Prosek, Dean King, Suzanne Berne, Sheri Holman, and Arielle Eckstut also generously extended a hand to help me join their ranks.

For many years I have benefited from the encouraging company of writers and publishing professionals through the literary nonprofit organization James River Writers. The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, WriterHouse, the Tin House Writer's Workshop, and the Acadia Summer Arts Program have each offered time, fine company, and a place to work.

My siblings, Lyndy and Chris, have offered generous support over decades, as have my in-laws, Carol and Earl Ravenal. I wish that my mother and father were here to enjoy this publication. My mother, Mary Toombs Waddill, was a crackerjack editor and reader, and her wisdom, goodness, and love continue to guide me always. My father wrote prolifically for decades, sometimes with a Red Sox or Celtics game on the TV, and showed me that writing can be both a discipline and a joy.

And, finally, this novel is dedicated to my immediate family: Eva, for her bright spirit and abiding faith in me and herself; Daniel, for his clearheadedness, humor, and solid love; and, most of all, John, who has been at my side for thirty-plus years and has helped us to make a hopeful life together where I could pursue what I wanted most.