The Distant Land of My Father
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REVIEW BY AMY SCRIBNER
The Distant Land of My Father is the first novel by essayist Bo Caldwell, and she tackles a lot here. From war and abandonment to loyalty and luck, the book spans many ideas, several decades and three generations of an American family living in the Far East. The result is a magical story of 1930s Shanghai, with Caldwell weaving in details until one can smell the steaming noodles sold by street vendors and hear the bustle of an international city filled with both opportunity and danger. The novel begins after the death of Joseph Schoene, when his daughter Anna unearths his meticulously kept journals. In them, he details his years amassing a fortune as a wealthy smuggler of foreign goods, and later becoming a brutally tortured prisoner of war when he refuses to leave Shanghai after the Japanese occupation. Seven-year-old Anna and her mother flee to California with Josephís promise to follow them shortly. That he never does -- and that he would choose such a cruel fate over a safe return to America with his wife and young daughter -- is a mystery that grips Anna from the beginning of her new life in California well into adulthood. It is only after she finds his journals that Anna begins to understand the allure Joseph saw in Shanghai. The Distant Land of My Father is an unforgettable story of decisions: whether to leave oneís fate to luck or choose a deliberate path. In Shanghai, with its talismans, superstitions and reliance on luck, everything from elephants to peacocks symbolize good fortune. Even when imprisoned in a filthy internment camp, Joseph Schoene believes luck will save him. Anna does not. She sets about creating a conventional, comfortable life for herself in California and convinces herself that her father is part of her past. When an elderly Joseph Schoene reappears unannounced, luck is no help. The father and daughter have to decide for themselves what to do with their broken relationship. The backward, often surprising, and always touchingly human ways in which Anna and her father finally come to terms with their choices and with each other make for a believable and lovely first novel. By contrasting steamy, troubled Shanghai with sunny post-war California, Caldwell has captured a time in history unfamiliar to many, and well worth visiting. Amy Scribner is a writer in Washington, D.C.
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