Swimming Back to Trout River

"With lean prose and assured storytelling, this debut novel describes a family fractured by geography, ambition and the ripple effects of China's tumultuous 20th-century history."--NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (NEW AND NOTEWORTHY)

"Against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a husband and wife are afraid to share their deepest longings and regrets. With disarmingly quiet prose, Feng digs beneath Cassia's and Momo's reluctance to mine their emotional depths as they struggle to grasp their individual experiences as well as their fractured relationship. Filled with tragedy yet touched with life-affirming passion."--KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)

"Feng's lithe debut moves with grace from Communist China to San Francisco and the Great Plains, and from the 1960s to the 1980s, as it follows four interlocked lives....With the lightest of touches, Feng vividly portrays the experience of living in China during Mao's rule as well as the pressures of being a new immigrant. Looking deeply into the 'invisible mesh' that links her characters' lives, Feng weaves a plot both surprising and inevitable, with not a word to spare."--BOOKLIST (STARRED REVIEW)

"Feng's striking debut novel chronicles what happens to a young Chinese family in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Feng captures humor and grief in equal measures...and she elegantly references Chinese concepts of fate and luck while building toward a poignant conclusion. This resonates from page one."--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Hard to put down, this beautifully written novel is filled with optimism...Feng makes her mark in this promising debut, and she successfully weaves in several unexpected plot twists as the narrative unfolds, leaving readers to long for a sequel."--LIBRARY JOURNAL

"During the tumultuous years of China's Cultural Revolution, 10-year-old Junie receives a letter from her parents in the United States promising to come retrieve her before her 12th birthday, but Junie doesn't want to leave her grandparents or the Chinese countryside. Her reluctance could derail her parents' plan, especially since long-buried family secrets and their individual struggles have already driven them apart."--GOOD HOUSEKEEPING (25 Best Historical Fiction Books to Take You Back in Time)

"Sensitively exploring themes of grief, hope and resilience, Swimming Back to Trout River is a symphony of a novel that is operatic in scope and elevated by Feng's artful writing."--BOOKPAGE

"Feng's debut is about a ten-year-old girl in a small Chinese village in 1986 whose parents live in America and have promised to return by her twelfth birthday. A novel about longing and secrets and immigrant compromises, one Garth Greenwell calls one of the most beautiful debuts he's read in years."--ELECTRIC LIT (44 BOOKS BY WOMEN OF COLOR TO READ IN 2021)

"Linda Rui Feng's Swimming Back to Trout River is a beautifully written, poignant exploration of family, art, culture, immigration and most of all, love. I was swept away by Feng's fierce intelligence and keen insight even as her characters captured my heart with their tender hopes and bold actions. A gorgeous book that I couldn't put down."--JEAN KWOK, author of Searching for Sylvie Lee and Girl in Translation

"What can account for the astonishing emotional force of this debut novel? Maybe it's that Linda Rui Feng understands her characters with an intimacy one seldom encounters, or the sense one has that she loves them so much. Or maybe it's Feng's exceedingly rare gift for putting language to feelings so profound, and so exquisitely observed, that they escape all readymade names. Everything in this gorgeously orchestrated novel surprises, everything outraces expectation. Swimming Back to Trout River is one of the most beautiful debuts I have read in years."--GARTH GREENWELL, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You

"Swimming Back to Trout River is notable for the grace of its prose and the harmony of its intertwined narratives, but the essential 'beat' of this wonderful fiction is the heartbeat of its characters, so richly and lovingly brought to life."--PETER HO DAVIES, author of The Fortunes

"A beautiful and haunting story about a family's journey, a child's persistence, a couple's love. We all desire more, don't we? Yet we can't always predict what's on the other side. I felt immersed, taken back to a tumultuous and strange time that was full of inconceivable moments and hidden brightness. Feng writes with unflinching grace. She is exploratory yet precise, a narrative powerhouse. Needless to say, the music is poignant."--WEIKE WANG, author of Chemistry

"An impressive and thoroughly satisfying debut....This book offers profound insight into human longing: how lives become intertwined and complicated by desire, fear, and memory. Music and its riveting power connects Feng's characters through space and time. The period details are seamlessly woven, resulting in a beautifully crafted work of art with a story that will linger long after the turning of the final page."--ANN Y.K. CHOI, author of Kay's Lucky Coin Variety