This is an epic account of the lives of ordinary people on the Loess Plateau. Through the fates of two generations, the novel reveals bonds of family deeper than blood, devotion more burdensome than love, and women’s dreams crushed and reborn in the cracks of the times. When children fall out over an inheritance and new buildings replace old cave homes, only the nameless grave and the old song passed from mouth to mouth continue to tell a simple truth: some things outlast fame and fortune. They are the undying spark deep in the human heart, the stubbornness that says, “Even if I sink into the mud, I’ll push through the cracks in the stone,” and the inexhaustible spirit passed from one generation to the next through the lives of those who came before.
