Here's the section that made me really certain that I was reading something 100% worth my time - good in isolation, and far better in the context of the associations that, by page 42, the novel has already set up to resonate when activated here.
They've nearly reached the foot of the mountains, one week later, when the rib in the sky thickens. Wolf moon, rarest kind. Bright enough that after sunset and star rise comes moonrise. Silver pries their eyes awake. The blades of grass, the bristles of Nellie's mane, the creases of their clothes - illuminated.
Across the grass, an even brighter glow.
Like two still sleeping they rise from their blankets and walk. Their hands brush. Did Sam reach across? Or is it a coincidence of strides grown similar thanks to Sam's new height?
The light comes from a tiger skull.
It's pristine. The snarl untouched. Chance didn't place this skull; the beast didn't die here. No other bones surround it. The empty sockets face East and North. Follow its gaze, and Lucy sees the very end of the mountains, where the wagon trail curves to the plains.
"It's -" Lucy says, heart quickening.
"A sign," Sam says.
Most times Lucy can't read Sam's dark eyes. Tonight the moonlight has pierced Sam through, made Sam's thoughts clear as the blades of grass. Together they stand as if at a threshold, remembering the tiger Ma drew in the doorway of each new house. Ma's tiger like no other tiger Lucy has seen, a set of eight lines suggesting the beast only if you squinted. A cipher. Ma drew her tiger as protection against what might come. Singing, Lao hu, lao hu.
Ma drew her tiger in each new home.
Song shivers through Lucy's head as she touches the skull's intact teeth. A threat, or else a grin. What was the last word of the song? A call to the tiger: Lai.
"What makes a home a home?" Lucy says.
Sam faces the mountains and roars.
In some ways, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is deceptive. There's a surface flashiness to it, in the present-tense, image-rich argot through which it's narrated (to start with, by Lucy, age 12) and the self-reflexive myth-making it wears on its sleeve, mega-buffalo and tigers roaming late Gold Rush California and refracted through the prism of its Chinese-American experience. And then there's the apparent simplicity of its high concept - the two lost sisters with their Chinese parentage, seeking opportunity in an America whose frontiers are still seemingly untamed, but already haunted by the ghosts of western 'progress'. But in truth those elements are strengths, and wrapped together by the control that Zhang exerts over her material so that the symbols and motifs operate as plot as well as theme. It's very satisfying, and very good.
