“
Take Me Home is 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.
Take Me Home is a powerful story about friendship and love set against the stunning backdrop of 1880's Wyoming and based in the pages of history.
Like many classic stories, Brian Leung’s new novel begins with a journey home. Adele “Addie” Maine is returning to Dire, a Wyoming coal-mining town, forty years after the deadly events that nearly took her life and drove her away without a word to her husband.
Years earlier: Headed West to stay with her brother Tommy, a young and feisty Addie arrives in Wyoming having been convinced along the way that the Chinese who work alongside the white men in the small Wyoming town are half-man, half-beast—devious creatures to be wary of. When Tommy falters at homesteading, the siblings look to the coal mines and Addie comes into close contact with one Chinese man in particular, Wing Lee. The bond between the two is a mere spark at first, hampered by the reality for both that a friendship would be impossible, forbidden, even in a territory where almost everyone is an immigrant.
Together, Addie and Wing harbor a secret. Ultimately Addie must protect Wing’s life and fight for what she knows is right, but she still can’t find the answers to life’s most important questions. It’s only as a much older woman, returning to Dire to bid farewell to a friend from decades ago, that Addie comes face-to-face with the man she’s certain tried to kill her, and at last confronts the surprises and losses that await at the end of a difficult journey.
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."
