
Spanning three generations this novel of family & myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty as the Chinese battle both the Japanese invaders & each other in the turbulent 1930s As the novel opens a group of villagers led by Commander Yu the narrator's grandfather prepare to attack the advancing Japanese Yu sends his 14-year-old son back home to get food for his men; but as Yu's wife returns through the sorghum fields with the food the Japanese start firing & she is killed Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present & the narrator moves back & forth recording the war's progress the fighting between the Chinese warlords & his family's history