Digging to America: A Novel

Book review by Jane
I was looking for more fiction to read, and happened across this title somehow. The story begins when two families await the arrival of their adopted children from Korea. They meet and celebrate the arrival together through a party, which they continue year after year, while their children are growing. To complicate matters, one of the families is Iranian American. The other family is kind of a strange family, and the mother of one of the girls is usually the planner of events. They have parties over about any occasion.

The book looks into the individual lives of the family members pretty intensely and studies the way they all interact beautifully. My favorite character is Maryam. She is the mother of the Iranian American father, who is a widow and finds a romance with another character who is the grandfather of one of the Korean girls. Their relationship is intriguing, because you can never tell exactly which way it is going. Maryam is hard to figure out at times, which makes her a good character. I wanted to keep going back to see what she was doing.

I loved the surprise ending of this story. It was set at about the same tempo as the rest of the story and tied things up very nicely. The tempo was not action packed, but remained a page-turner. The characters were imperfect, which added to the charm of their meeting in the airport.

Anne Tyler won a Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons: A Novel.

Jane.