A Map for the Missing: A Novel

A Map for the Missing: A Novel by Belinda Huijuan Tang

Tang Yitian is a  Chinese man from a small village currently working as a young professor at Stanford. He receive a call from home that his father is missing. He rushes back to China to see him. The novel combines his search with flashbacks to his earlier life. In this trip back he finds out more about his father and family and helps to reconcile his family relationship. He discovers that his father and brother likely had dyslexia which made learning difficult. This coupled with the cultural revolution made his father disdain learning. (His grandfather was an academic, which made life difficult during the cultural revolution.)  Yitian tries to hunt down his dad, and later learns that his  dad has alzheimer's and wandered off. Yitian enlists the help of an old friend and learns what became of her life in the process. Through flashbacks, we learn of the test and the experience that led him to enter the university in China and the impact it had on his family. His brother also died via meningitis liked contracted from their visit to the city. Other details of his life are gradually unfolded. In the end he appears to reconcile with his family and the small village life as he discovers that his wife is finally pregnant back in California. In hunting down his dad, Yitian finds that his dad had been trying to purchase history books to help reconcile with his son, completing the family reconciliation. Yitian's life is very different from that of a villager, yet there are still common bonds. While the novel is set in China at the precipice of great change, the feelings of belonging and being separate can be easily applied anywhere.