SONG OF THE TEN THOUSANDS

by B.D. Love ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

In this novelistic memoir, a boy is placed in the care of relatives in an idyllic landscape.

Lanny’s father left town. His mother told him it would be a while before he came back. It wasn’t long before Mr. Allen moved in, a hard-drinking, short-tempered man who beat Lanny with his belt for just mentioning his father. After the assault, the boy’s mother drove the 5-year-old Lanny to the country to stay with Uncle Jim. “I’m leaving him American. And that’s how I want him back. American,” his mother said to Jim right before she drove away. “Not one single mention of C-H-I-N-You-Know-What.” Jim and his sister, Aunt MayLynne, were a strange pair: The former was a habitual collector of strays; the latter bedridden with “tired blood.” Jim taught Lanny how to fish and catch frogs, and he gave him a puppy, Skip, to keep him company. Jim also told Lanny the tale of how he lost a finger to the Big Snapper, a monstrous turtle that lived in the lake. The boy quickly figured out how to navigate the woods and water, reading the signs of the creatures that lived there. He learned to distrust the “summer people” who blundered through during certain months of the year. His uncle and aunt both told their nephew stories: Jim, about growing up with Lanny’s father and grandfather; MayLynne, tales from the old country where the boy’s grandfather was born. Encoded in these yarns—as well as the experiences Lanny had in the woods surrounding the family cabin—were lessons for how to exist in the world as well as a guide to who the boy was and where he had come from. But could these kindly relatives keep Lanny safe beyond the day when his mother inevitably returned to collect him?

Love tells the story from Lanny’s young perspective, giving it a gloss of wonder and partial understanding. The lucid prose reflects this naiveté: “Sometimes, on the path in the main woods, Skip would catch a scent, and I’d have to run to keep up with him, waving the branches and the brambles out of my face so they didn’t scratch. Most times, he’d just tree a squirrel, but once he had a raccoon on a branch just over his head. The raccoon was hissing at Skip something terrible.” The author bills the book as “the true story of a false childhood,” but the work is far more novelistic than memoiristic. He re-creates scenes and dialogue and resists the urge to explain or view events through hindsight. Indeed, the volume reads much like a children’s novel, such as Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows. This is not a flaw. The narrative has a subtle yet emotionally satisfying shape to it, and young readers will enjoy watching Lanny acquire skills and develop healthy relationships. The handling of Lanny’s Chinese ancestry—which is very rarely discussed—and the effective blending of Chinese traditions with woodsy American ones complicate this otherwise familiar story of a mid-20th-century boyhood.

An engaging and controlled account of what love and home can look like.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 205

Publisher: Manuscript

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2020

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR