A sumptuous slow burn

Tom Lin’s second novel Babylon, South Dakota moves beyond a historical account of an immigrant family’s struggle, delightfully blending and bending genres.

Lin is a Chinese-born novelist whose family emigrated to the U.S. when he was four years old. His debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making him the youngest ever recipient of that award. He earned a PhD in English from the University of California Davis and is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

Babylon, South Dakota takes place in an unspecified time period that can be understood to be during the Mao era — likely the 1950s or ’60s. A young Chinese couple, the Hsuis, immigrate to the rural community that gives the book its title. They take the names Saul and Mei and settle on a 160-acre homestead left to them by a distant relative.

Saul’s dream is to breed and sell chrysanthemums from seeds he brought from China, while Mei wants to raise livestock. They speak no English, know nothing of life in the United States, are unprepared for the harshness of winter and the isolation of the farm and bring nothing with them except some gold, which Mei hides around the house for emergencies. Their only link to the outside world is a discarded and marginally functioning TV set, which Saul rescues and rigs up.

The family saga is spiced with magic realism, geopolitical intrigue and a ghost story. Soon after Saul and Mei’s arrival, representatives of the U.S. Army come knocking on their door, wanting to buy an acre of the Hsius’ land for an unspecified project. The Hsius’ consent is secured with the help of an interpreter, Abraham Song, who, along with his fiancée, becomes their first friends in the United States.

The Hsius have a daughter named Mara; growing up on the farm, as her parents’ chrysanthemum and livestock businesses thrive, she is able to understand and communicate with animals. Eventually, a dog joins the family after Saul hunts him for killing their chickens, but is mysteriously unable to shoot him.

Meanwhile, the family becomes increasingly uneasy about the army’s presence on the farm. The army builds an exact replica of the Hsuis’ home, and the family begins to notice unusual environmental and health effects. Eventually Abraham confesses the true nature and goals of the army’s project.

At the same time Mara is growing up, falling in love and preparing to start a family of her own, with a white husband ostracized by his family for his choice of partner. Saul, meanwhile, is struggling with trauma. He suffers nightmares so severe that a doctor visits and puts him into a deathlike, fantastic sleep which lasts months, and takes him back to China and the repression of Mao’s cultural revolution.

Babylon, South Dakota is a slow burn. The plot and structure are not traditional in that they don’t move forward with any sense of building on previous chapters. It reads more like a series of vignettes, each containing just enough connective tissue to relate it back to the others. Much of the book reads like a dreamscape, where reality and fantasy intertwine. Lin is able to maintain each strand of the plot without losing focus.

The prairie setting functions as a character — its seasons correspond with the moods and trials of the characters, its wildness and changeability gloriously painted.

The writing is florid, at times slightly self-indulgent, but generally well-suited to this sprawling, epic tale and its supernatural elements. The characters are intimately drawn through decades of their lives, and Lin empathetically depicts Mei’s development of dementia as she ages.

After becoming attached to these characters, their final and abrupt fate may take some readers aback. It feels like a bit of a letdown after investing so heavily in their lives.

Zilla Jones is a Winnipeg-based writer of short and long fiction. Her debut novel The World So Wide was published in April 2025.