Roots and Wings

A girl abandoned by fate on the loess, and an old man whose frail, gaunt back held up her world.

From the beginning of her childhood, her father, mother, and grandfather disappeared from her world one after another, leaving behind only silent fields and a domineering grandmother. She was her grandmother's unwanted burden, a thorn in her aunt's side, and the little grown-up in the fields who never shied away from hard work.

Just as she thought life meant laboring desperately for the tiniest chance to survive, her uncle and aunt headed south to find work, leaving their own children with the grandmother, who was already nearing the end of her life. The two children who had been