KINFOLK

A contemporary novel with Chinese-Americans living in New York as the proponents, and the scene shifting, for four of the young people, from New York to warhaunted China. The eldest son of a scholar and lecturer, Dr. Liang, is determined to go ""home"" to China, there to practice medicine. His engagement is broken as a result of his decision, and the return itself is a painful process of reorientation, with the unsavory realities of modern China. Then his younger brother and his two sisters are sent to join him and through their acceptance and rejection the pattern of modern China and the reactions of youth are conveyed. Shanghai- Peiping- the ancestral village with Uncle Tao the controlling spirit and the past still dominating, provided the varied facets of China in sharp contrast with Chinatown, in New York. The chief value for young people is the convincing portrait of Chinese- Americans, the conflicts, the problems of adjustment anywhere.