Oasis - by Yang Huang (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Kaier has carried a torch for Lou since he rescued her from a flash flood when they were children. Kaier is a bright, ambitious child, but in rural China, she is expected to help at home, raise her younger brothers, and be the best in school. She battles for her education until one tragic day when her baby brother wanders out into an oncoming dust storm, Kaier runs into the storm to save him and makes herself desperately ill.

Kaier's time in a hospital fuels her ambition to be a doctor and when Lou seems more interested in her beautiful cousin than he is in her, she dives headfirst into life in Nanjing, the large coastal city where she can pursue her university degree. When Lou's wife becomes sick with myeloma, Kaier needs to decide if she's willing to help her or does she want Lou for herself. Oasis explores the power of devotion, both to those we love and those places we first called home.

Review Quotes

"Oasis offers an intimate, absorbing glimpse into the day-to-day lives of young people in rural and urban China--their hopes, their loves, their ambitions--in the years leading up to the 1989 student uprising at Tiananmen Square. This powerful and unforgettable story of the sacrifices we make when we choose between two widely divergent worlds will stay with me for a long, long time."
--Alka Joshi, author of The Henna Artist and the Jaipur Trilogy

"Gripping and evocative, Oasis immerses us in Kaier's tumultuous trajectory from her impoverished childhood in rural China to medical school in Nanjing. Yang Huang's novel, rich and wide-ranging, illuminates many themes, but at its heart is a love story you won't soon forget."
--Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History

"By turns searing and tender, Yang Huang's Oasis is an epic that spans decades of social and political transformation in China, sweeping across the deserts of Gansu to the bustle of Nanjing to the shores of Hainan. Kaier is an unforgettable heroine, whose journey exemplifies the survival, heartbreak, and the courage necessary to claim your own destiny. A triumph."
--Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City and Coyoteland

"What does it mean to leave a home and struggle to make a new one? To find an education? Learn to love? Yang Huang takes us on a gripping journey through rural and urban China after the Cultural Revolution. Lushly imagined and psychologically nuanced, Oasis will live long in my mind and heart."
--Elizabeth Graver, author of Kantika

"Yang Huang's Oasis--the rural hometown in China where her young protagonist is born and grows up--is disappearing. All that the land has given--water, food, health, family, and community--is being wounded by violent dust storms, drought, and unfettered development. With keen insight and emotional resonance, Huang tells the story of a young woman's deep ties to a people and a way of life she loves, but must leave in order to survive. Oasis is a clear and sharp depiction of the hard choices many of us must make during this unprecedented time of transition."
--Susanne Pari, author of In the Time of Our History

"Oasis is a heartfelt and richly authentic coming-of-age portrait of a young girl whose fate is inextricably tied to the ecological devastation of rural China after the Cultural Revolution."
--Aimee Liu, judge of the Cai Emmons Fiction Award and author of Glorious Boy

About the Author

Yang Huang is an award-winning, Chinese-born American author. Her most recent novel, Oasis, won the Cai Emmons Fiction Award. She is also the author of My Good Son, winner of the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize; the Juniper Prize-winning story collection, My Old Faithful; and the debut novel Living Treasures, which received a Nautilus Book Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, The Millions, and elsewhere. A member of San Francisco Writers' Grotto, she works at UC Berkeley and lives in the Bay Area with her family. More at www.yanghuang.com