Overview
Winner of the 2001 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction
"This novelās poignancy, I think, comes from the paradoxical confrontation between innocence and experience these Asian strivers are caught ināat the same time that they are rendered childlike by ignorance of their new culture, we know they have been singed and seared, and therefore secretly toughened. Immigration is such a significant phenomenon right now that this tension between competency and confusion, maturity and infantilization is an enormously fecund subject for a novelist with a well-developed sense of irony."āFrom the Foreword by Rosellen Brown
In an essay written for his ESL class, a young student describes his flight from Vietnam at the age of 12, in a fishing boat with three friends. They were beaten by Thai pirates, fell faint with hunger and pain, until they were "pushed to the kind shore by a finger of God." The phrase evokes an overriding metaphor for this resonant first novel by Kate Gadbow, in which a community of Vietnamese and Hmong refugees struggles to maintain balance between the world they fled and the one they are currently negotiating in Missoula, Montana. Gadbow meshes the lives of these refugees with that of the bookās narrator Janet Hunter, a teacher struggling to manage contemporary life, with a failed marriage and a string of disappointments haunting her own past.
In a deceptively simple prose style that reads like easy conversation, and with an admirable lack of sentimentality, Kate Gadbow has written a remarkable novel depicting the clash of cultures and the difficult realities inherent to a world given only to constant change, where the harbor of a kind shore seems frustratingly out of reach.
Kate Gadbow directs the Creative Writing Program and teaches undergraduate fiction classes at the University of Montana in Missoula, where she lives with her husband, journalist Daryl Gadbow.
This book title, Pushed to Shore (A Short Novel), ISBN: 9781889330815, by Kate Gadbow, Rosellen Brown, published by Sarabande Books (January 1, 2003) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
Unlike Amazon and other retailers who may also offer Pushed to Shore (A Short Novel) books on their website, we specialize in large quantities and provide personal service, from trusted, experienced, friendly people in Portland, Oregon. We offer a Price Match Guarantee, and QuickQuote form, to make purchasing quick and easy.
Prefer to work with a human being when you order Pushed to Shore (A Short Novel) books in bulk? Our Book Specialists are standing by Monday-Friday 8-5 PST, ready to help!