The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu (A Novel) - Tom Lin

A Chinese American assassin sets out to rescue his kidnapped wife and exact revenge on her abductors in this New York Times Book Review Editors Choice: a twist on the classic western from "an astonishing new voice" (Jonathan Lethem). Orphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoons henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad. Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming blazes his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale. Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one mans quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality. "In Tom Lins novel, the atmosphere of Cormac McCarthys West, or that of the Coen Brothers True Grit, gives way to the phantasmagorical shades of Ray Bradbury, Charles Finneys The Circus of Dr. Lao, and Katherine Dunns Geek Love. Yet The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu has a velocity and perspective all its own, and is a fierce new version of the Westward Dream." —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless BrooklynWinner of the Carnegie Medal for ExcellenceFinalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award