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Title: River of Dust

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Virginia Pye

Narrator: Caroline Shaffer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-31-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

On the windswept plains of northwestern China, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes lost in the rugged, corrupt countryside populated by opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses. This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants and is christened Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers. Grace, his young ingnue wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, where visions of her stolen child and lost husband begin to beckon to her from across the plains. The foreign couple's savvy and dedicated Chinese servants, Ahcho and Mai Lin, accompany and eventually lead them through dangerous territory to find one another again. With their Christian beliefs sorely tested, their concept of fate expanded, and their physical health rapidly deteriorating, the Reverend and Grace may finally discover an understanding between them that is greater than the vast distance they have come.

Members Reviews:

kudos for River of Dust

I was absolutely transported by River of Dust, throughout the entire book. I have never been to China, but felt like I was actually there, on those godforsaken plains, where events take place that change a couple's life forever. The main character of the missionary was so intricately drawn that what might, in a lesser author's hands, have been a difficult personality to bring to life, through Pye's imagination becomes a complex, three-dimensional man, riven with doubts and fears about his past, but strong, powerful and compelled to action. His wife, burdened by circumstances, also transcends stereotyping (the good missionary's wife) by her complicated psyche and physical state that both stymy her and ultimately send her off on a mission perhaps larger in scope than her husband's. Without giving anything away, these characters broke my heart and also widened it as I experienced their travails right alongside them as they struggled along, searching for their child and coming to terms with their pasts. Kudos to the author for giving us so many colorful and also at times heart-rending experiences within one book!

A dramatic story that could have been told with a bit more nuance.

The book is about a missionary family in China in the 1800s that gradually breaks down when their child is kidnapped and spirited away. The formally formidable reverend goes rather mad and increasingly "native' in his search for his child, which devolves in a compulsive need to roam. The wife falls into an understandable depression and risks her unborn child in a desperate (and implausible) bid to regain intimacy with her husband by traveling with him. Two loyal servants provide additional perspective. The story is dramatic, and the writing is good, although I wouldn't call it evocative, probably because Virginia Pye never traveled to the region she wrote about. Oddly enough, the reverend is the character with the most dimensionality, although he's not a point of view character.