Babylon, South Dakota

A Novel

By: Tom Lin

From the author of the Carnegie Medal in Fiction winner The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu comes a tantalizing, American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a powerful, mysterious, and morally dubious military secret shapes their lives.

When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara.

But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu’s farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America’s nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.

In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of "strangers in a strange land" to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.

Critic reviews

"I can’t remember the last time I felt so lit up by a novel. Lin has built this wildly ambitious, deeply strange world with its own ecology and physics and sociology that is also, importantly, our world in all times past, present, and future. I love these characters. I love this prose. Babylon, South Dakota is a chilling diorama of what and how and who empire steals from us. There's also a dream-amplifying horn, light animal-whispering, a perfect dog named Santui. It’s wonder-full, enchanted and enchanting. I’m getting goosebumps right now as I type. This is the most excited I’ve been about a new book in ages."—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

"I loved this novel, which was so transporting that I forgot to look at my phone...Lin's gossamer prose is patient and full of wonders."—Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams and An Oral History of Atlantis

"Tom Lin has written a flawless novel that belongs in a category all its own. The prose is so precise, so vivid, that even everyday objects seem fantastical, invented just for this world. I’ll never be able to look at stained glass, or chrysanthemums, or even binoculars without being immediately transported back to Babylon, South Dakota. I’d die for—I’d go to another world for—Santui."—Paige Lewis, author of Canon

“I particularly loved how, on the surface, Babylon, South Dakota is a story of a family on a farm, and they stay there. In South Dakota. But the language and the love and the richness of the connection are so incredibly lush and propulsive. There is also a terrible magic to it all; one that gives, one that takes. It's greedy, and it's generous. Much like the Midwest itself. Much like survival. And love. What Tom Lin has written is a remarkable achievement. It's a story of land and family, of love and violence. It is also a story of holding on even when it's past time to let go. This novel is incredibly moving, imaginatively rendered, and astonishing in its depth of feeling. I am such a huge fan.”—Lyz Lenz, author of This American Ex-Wife