LITTLE WONDER

The bonds of love between a mother and son are tested in nightmarish ways in a story of devotion and perseverance.

The mellifluously named Song, a widow, and her son River, 11, fight the crowds on a train to Beijing just before the Spring Festival in 2016. They are relocating to the city from a village in northeastern China so River, a piano prodigy, can train with a better instructor. In the unruly crush of the crowd after the train empties, Song and River become separated. Keller launches into a narrative of heartbreaking sadness and relentless determination focused on the duo’s years-long struggle to reunite among the crowds, confusion, and bureaucracy of the sprawling city. Alternating accounts of Song’s terrified initial efforts to locate River with those of River’s abject misery at being lost, Keller creates a backdrop for the emotional isolation each endures over the years to come. The novel reaches back to earlier, happier years in Song’s life with River’s father, Blue, and slowly reveals the reasons for her unaccompanied travels with her son. As they fight the circumstances preventing them from reuniting, mother and son both encounter and take shelter with a variety of supporting characters who, eventually, become for each the found family they need to shelter and sustain themselves. River’s virtuosity and repertoire—and its early nurturing and development by Song—is presented in passages that are both lyrical and accessible to those not fluent in the vernacular of classical music. The novel’s suspenseful path to a cinematic ending takes Keller’s devoted duo five tortuous years to traverse (including frustratingly close proximity to each other in one case) but avoids a predictable, cookie-cutter ending.

Tissues may be needed as this intimate story of unceasing love unfolds in a seemingly heartless city.