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The joy of reading an Anne Tyler novel comes from meeting real characters --- people who easily might be your friends, neighbors or relatives; individuals who you care for and worry about. DIGGING TO AMERICA is Tyler's 17th novel, a work of joy, sadness, hope and fear that will resonate in the heart and soul of readers long after the final page is turned.
DIGGING TO AMERICA presents all that readers have grown to expect and appreciate about Tyler's novels that focus on the lives of residents of Baltimore, Maryland. But in this latest work, a new generation of characters and personalities from Korea, Iran and China are introduced to readers in a fashion that speaks volumes on issues as current as today's headlines. America as a nation remains the sum of all its parts, and the hopes and aspirations of a new generation of immigrants is the subject of this superb novel.
Two families, vastly divergent but sharing the commonality of adopted daughters from a far away land, serve as the underpinning for DIGGING TO AMERICA. Their chance meeting at the airport on the day their infant daughters arrive from Korea to begin life in America is a significant event, much like a marriage, that causes the two families to become one.
Brad and Bitsy Donaldson (although she continues to use her maiden name of Dickinson) make the welcome of their child at Baltimore's international airport a show business event. Video cameras and name tags identify each member of their extended family marking the occasion. The Donaldson child, Jin-Ho, maintains her Korean name and many elements of her Korean heritage. The second Korean child arriving that day is the daughter of Ziba and Sami Yazdan, a first-generation Iranian couple. The Yazdens will Americanize their daughter's name from Sooki to Susan. Over the coming years they take all possible steps to instill in their child every feasible aspect of American culture.
Through the efforts of Bitsy the two families begin to keep in touch. The anniversary of the children's arrival in America is marked by an "Arrival Party" where the video of the children meeting their new parents is shown, and for some unexplained reason the song "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" is sung. The celebration becomes a mix of American, Korean and Iranian culture, not to be missed by family members.
Anne Tyler, a very private woman, was married for 34 years to an Iranian psychiatrist who died in 1997. Perhaps this life experience has tailored her writing in DIGGING TO AMERICA. The multicultural spirit evident in the novel is a unique change from her past work. It offers the reader a refreshing and new perspective on our nation's increasingly multicultural way of life.
As the lives of the two families continue to interlock, a new and
separate relationship starts to flourish. Bitsy's widowed father,
Dave, begins a relationship with Sami's widowed mother Maryam. Tyler's
poignant description of Dave's isolated experience during his wife's
illness and his resulting loneliness is written in the understated
style that often appears in a Tyler novel. Most readers who have
suffered such loss will find comfort and understanding in the beautiful
words that explain why Dave needs the safe harbor of a relationship
in his life.
DIGGING TO AMERICA is a warm and moving work of literature. It is what one has come to expect of an author as exquisite and accomplished as Anne Tyler. From authors such as she, we gain a mirror into the foibles of our own lives. It is why great authors write and lovers of books continue to read.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
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