THEIR DIVINE FIRES

Four generations of a Chinese and Chinese American family navigate the ties and trials of kinship.

Chen begins her first novel with a fairytale romance in rural pre-communist China. Yunhong, whose name translates as something like Clouds of Happy Red, is from the Zhangs, a family of modest means, and her beau is the son of a local lord. But their marriage in 1927 is short-lived. One of her brothers is among the revolutionaries who ransack the lord’s house and kill her husband. The time shifts to 1967 and Nanjing. Yunhong’s twin granddaughters march off to school carrying Mao’s Little Red Book. Children have names like Leap Forward and Resist America. One twin loses her lover when he’s rusticated, like so many during the Cultural Revolution, and dies. The other, Hongxing, dreams of “joining an art troupe” and falls into a forbidden love. The book’s last big section jumps to the U.S. in the years 2004-2009. While some family members left China for the U.S., one who remained is Hongxing. She enjoyed a successful acting career until her illicit love emerged and she was “erased from public memory by the government.” Feeling utterly alone, she visits her sister in the U.S. and hopes to persuade her to have their ailing mother buried in China. Chen’s narrative is full of poignant family moments set against the larger canvas of history, while singular and recurring images link the fragmented narrative: a birthmark carried by daughters; a silk-lined trunk and its keepsakes handed down across generations; memories that are rendered as bedtime stories with dragons and princes; an old damaged photo restored by computer to startling clarity. Throughout, the author depicts women who find in themselves the strength to be more than the times might allow and in their families a sweet solace amid that struggle.

A poignant, impressive debut.