Off the Books

Frazier debuts with the delightfully offbeat yet weighty story of a Chinese American college dropout turned limo driver and a Uyghur Muslim girl fleeing Chinese persecution. After Mĕi Brown’s father dies, she returns from Dartmouth to Oakland, where she struggles with her mother’s refusal to grieve. Her limo-driving job attracts the attention of her eccentric lǎoyé (Mandarin for “grandfather”), who lives in the garage and spends his days smoking weed and playing video games. Lǎoyé connects Mĕi with under-the-table clients, mainly sex workers, and eventually with the mysterious and handsome Henry Lee, who hires her to drive him from San Francisco to Syracuse. Along the way, Mĕi discovers Henry is smuggling an 11-year-old girl, Anna, in his suitcase to reunite her with her professor father. Later, Mĕi learns that Anna and her mother were planning to leave China together, until her father’s incendiary articles about Uyghur persecution in Xinjiang led to her mother’s detention by Chinese authorities. The character work is top-notch, as Frazier shows how Mĕi offers Anna the kind of support she wished her own mother had provided, and the narrative structure (each chapter recounts a different leg of the journey) creates plenty of forward momentum. It’s a fresh take on the classic American road novel. (July)