Customer Reviews

Heaven Lake: A Novel

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

John Dalton rises quietly from his writing desk and demands, with grace and beauty, to be heard.

"Heaven Lake" is not only a wise and multi-dimensional study of the human character--in this case, a young man named Vincent--it is also a study of cultural differences and similarities. It parallels Vincent's initially shallow view of religion with his shallow accessment of women. As he goes through the crucible of his own sin and redemption, he gains a deeper understanding of life, relationships, and God's unfailing love.

Having traveled in mainland China myself, I worried that the book would waver in its attention to realism, but Dalton parcels out his details with a steady hand. Although he writes with utmost respect for the Chinese culture, he never whitewashes its imperfections. He expects us to view his characters and cultures with the same grace and forgiveness that he expects young Vincent to learn. Along the way, we meet unforgettable souls, such as Alec and Jai-Ling. We experience beauty. We learn lessons for our hearts.

For years, John Le Carre has told stories of espionage which are often studies of the lonely soul and the things that motivate it. Dalton does much the same thing in "Heaven Lake." He peels back the facades to reveal the intrigues of the heart. In so doing, he has created a masterpiece.

I had just finished reading "The Kite Runner" when I turned around and picked up Heaven Lake. As usually happens when I finish a particularly good book, I was expecting a let down. Consequently I was very pleased to find myself shifting from one really excellent book to another.

Heaven Lake is a story about an American "Jesus teacher," a missionary in Taiwan whose conviction about his religion, while sincere, is just a tad sanctimonious and disrespectful toward the "unsaved". His concern for their souls, while also sincere, is just a tad patronizing. His version of the truth must be spread.

His certainty is a little shaken by the arrival of another missionary, whose conviction is belligerent and self-righteous and even borders on the psychotic. In watching this woman and feeling ashamed and embarrassed by their association, he begins to question the wisdom of forcing his beliefs on strangers.

He's a genuinely good man with good intentions. Consequently, he is appalled by a local businessman's suggestion that he accept $10,000 to travel across mainland China in order to bring back a woman to be the businessman's bride. Because of the difficulty in obtaining a marriage license between the Taiwanese and the Chinese, the deal requires him to 1) marry the woman (the government is more lenient with marriages to foreigners), 2) establish her in Taiwan so she can more easily marry her intended husband, 3) divorce her and 4) turn her over to him.

Like I said, he's initially appalled. Then an affair he has with a student and the subsequent beating her brother gives him make him question his faith, his safety in Taiwan, and his future. The businessman's proposition gives him an excuse to leave Taiwan and the angry brother. It also gives him an opportunity to break ties with the missionary, which he's grown to feel increasingly hypocritical being involved with.

So he makes the arrangements and off he goes, traveling across China in what can only be described as a nightmare travelogue, to marry a woman he's never met.

The book is filled with realism, very well-drawn characters, and a story that isn't predictable at all. It was a great story and very well-written. I thoroughly enjoyed every word of it, and highly recommend it.

What a pleasurable experience, the best $26.00 I have spent on a book in a long time! Please read this book, but only if you like beautiful prose, a suspenseful plot with passion, love and redemption in a fascinating cultural setting, well delineated characters you will never forget, and don't mind never getting your copy of the book back after you loan it to your favorite fellow reader. You will enjoy every page, learn much and feel completely satisfied with Heaven Lake. This book is so indelibly engrained that I am still enjoying it a week after I read it--(I guess that's an extra bonus, proving I'm not losing my short memory yet!)--unlike other bestsellers that immediately fade away.

Exquisite; by far the best contemporary book I've read in quite a long time. Dalton's characters are vivid, his prose often poetic. The story is full of twists and turns that kept me turning pages. The details on Red Bud, Illinois, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China make this book a rich, satisfying and informative read. When I reached the end, I was truly sorry it all had to end.

This is a very impressive debut novel,wonderful to read and rich with new insights into China, spiritual longing and growth, and a young man's coming of age. It even has that very rare attribute of real suspense--I had no idea how it would end. What a treat.

There is always that temptation to compare one writer to another, but I am going to avoid that. Because Vincent,the main character, speaks fluent Chinese, he is able to get inside the mainland and Taiwanese cultures in a way that is rare in books written by foreigners. Once that level of mystery is stripped away from a culture hidden for so long from Western eyes, China emerges even quirkier than we would imagine. Earnest Vincent from Red Bud, Illinois, makes an excellent guide into this world. His pragmatic nature cuts down on bouts of hysteria, yet he is a young guy and does make some surprising judgement calls.

I will warn you that "Heaven Lake" does get off to a slowish start, but stick with it. Once Vincent begins to get his Taiwan ministry into action, you will not want to leave his side for long enough to eat breakfast. Your only regret in picking this book up is that it is not longer; although if it were, it might not be so perfect.--Candace Siegle

I was initially worried that this novel, describing the journey of a Christian missionary to Taiwan and later through mainland China, would be too preachy. But I was wrong. This is so much more than the story of a boy. The protagonist goes through a transformtion by going, figuratively and literally, to hell and back.

Dalton's prose is subtle and moving; nothing is black and white. Each character is meticulously developed - these are real people not puppets.

I've been to China and the place Dalton describes, Heaven Lake. This is originally why I read this novel, but I gained much more than I had ever hoped. This is definitely a great read.

In 1981, shortly after China had re-opened to the world, I had the great good fortune to spend a month traveling there. At that time, all men and women wore Mao suits; only toddlers were clothed in kaleidoscopic swatches of material, seemingly in protest of the enforced uniformity and drabness of the grey-blue suits. Foreigners were such a rarity that, if I went for a walk, inevitably, I would be approached by a Chinese person who had learned English by listening to the radio and wanted to practice. Soon I and my friendly Chinese interrogator would be engulfed by a crowd. When the conversation ended, my new friend would turn and report to the crowd what he had learned from me about Western culture, politics, education -- whatever we had discussed. I also remember once being chased down the street of a remote village by a young mother holding her infant, communicating by gestures and a desperate expression that this was, perhaps, the only chance she might ever have to get a Polaroid picture of her precious baby. To this day I regret that I didn't have that type of camera.

Twenty-three years after I left China, John Dalton, with his beautiful and brilliant book, Heaven Lake, took me further into that country than I had traveled and allowed me to better understand what I had experienced there. This is a vast novel, not only in its geographical scope, but in its understanding of the human heart. Dalton, through the creation of complex characters and the skillful use of the methaphor of an arduous journey, conveys perceptive insights: that "life is rich with an innate and mysterious possibility;" that trouble happens and happiness is fleeting; that people understand you better than you think they do; and that "[m]aybe the successful lives [are] those that are gracefully endured."

Dalton's is a wise and poetic voice, not to be missed.

It's a rare novel these days that delivers the triple whammy: a riveting plot that keeps you avid, both surprised and convinced by the unfolding story; a deep wisdom and compassionate understanding of complicated characters in a morally ambivalent universe; and a precision of language that is up to the task of setting both the plot and the characters in a rich, particular, and fully-realized world. The story of Vincent, a Midwestern innocent headed to Taiwan as a Christian volunteer; his fall from grace; and the strange journey that leads him across mainland China, is one of great adventure and intrigue, fear, romance, and the struggle between our own essential loneliness and desire for connection. It is a picaresque journey Vincent embarks upon, ill-equipped, with good intentions and little worldy experience, but it is the inner journey that shadows his outer one that ultimately moves the reader most. By turns hilarious, contemplative and ecstatic, Heaven Lake marks a stunning debut of a major new talent. John Dalton has written a book as beautiful as it is true about the ways in which life is both less and more than we have the capacity to imagine. Very highly recommended.

There is a little story I heard about years ago which has to do with a guy who has died and who is given the opportunity to look back upon his life. He sees it as a series of footprints on the sand. For most of his life there are two sets of footprints--he is led to understand they are God's and his--but for many periods there was only one. He confronts God: "Where were you? Those were the bleakest periods of my life, and you weren't there!" God says: "Those weren't your footprints, my son, they were mine. I was carrying you."

I mention the above because it is illustrative of one of the themes of this superb novel, which is that of the existence of a divine benevolence in our lives, even though we all go through times when we feel we are lost. It is by no means the only theme, however. This novel contains many and is an absolutely splendid work of fiction.

It is the story of a young fellow who decides to go to Taiwan to set up a Christian mission. He could have done so in the small-town, southern Illinois milieu of his upbringing, but felt that to truly accept the word of Christ, he must go out into the world. It is a world, we discover, he is totally unprepared for. He brings his black-and-white perceptions into this world and slowly begins to realize that they don't fit. He is not accomplishing anything. It is to the novel's great credit that we, as readers, see that his single-minded, un-nuanced approach is doomed to fail long before he does.

And then he falls, in an utterly predictable way, to the charms of a curious, seventeen-year old female student. He is disgraced, and finds that he must flee. He does so by accepting a mission he had previously, dismissively rejected: that of going to mainland China to marry a girl, in order to bring her out of the country to be the wife of a local, influential businessman. The girl lives in Urumchi, at the furthest reaches of wretched, heat be-stroked, western China, literally on the other side of Mongolia. Its one saving grace is its out-of-town pristine mountain resort, Heaven Lake. (Yes, this is meant to be symbolism. The novel is loaded with it.)

So begins his journey of self-discovery, through this exasperating, often uncomfortable, occasionally scary, completely unpredictable country. Nothing is as he imagined it would be; nothing is as we imagined it would be.

He finally meets the girl. Turns out that she is not going to be as compliant an accomplice as he anticipated. Turns out his benefactor businessman wasn't entirely forthcoming with him either. Many surprising twists and turns here, all of which are ultimately logical in the grand scheme of things. It's also quite a bit of fun in that the reader is always about one step ahead of the protagonist in figuring things out, and even more fun in that both he and us are usually wrong.

You will find yourself enthralled. It works on so many levels: an adventure, a coming of age journey, and a juxtaposition of western and eastern cultures, to name just a few. But what I find most interesting is the aspect of faith. Our protagonist loses his, feels abandoned, indeed feels unworthy of it. But while he is losing his, we are gaining ours. Because, although he isn't aware of it, there are forces out there that are aware of him, forces that are concerned for him, forces that care about him. That these forces are not necessarily Christian may be symbolic of his own myopic viewpoint, but that these forces exist is unquestionable. It's a neat trick. And in the meantime, after his return to Taiwan--to salvation as it were--we find that he himself has become a force, a benevolent, unseen hand in the lives of others.

Man, is this a piece of work. First-class fiction all the way. Magnificent.

The mysteries of Asia lure many young men from the West, and some women too, who are looking for a serious adventure. Some think they are running away from family. Others say they are seeking a fortune. Still others believe they are pursuing a noble idea, like converting yellow heathens to Christianity. Whatever the ostensible reason for venturing to an utterly foreign culture, the common if unrecognized thread among these rugged sojourners is most often a desire to explore the other side of the world in order to better understand themselves.

`Heaven Lake,' the impressive debut novel of John Dalton, rides on the shoulders of one of these young men, who starts out with simple and immature notions and, as he endures the unexpected series of events that befall him, becomes a seasoned traveler. It is a beguiling story, told with comic flair. The opening premise - an earnest American missionary goes to a small town in Taiwan to set up and operate a ministry house at the tender age of 22 - might seem daunting. The young man, Vincent Saunders, conscientiously establishes a program of free English classes to attract the unsuspecting, and then once they are seated in his classroom, to tell them about the Bible. Townspeople respond to the free classes, but are skeptical about the Jesus talk.

Dalton has a fine feel for Chinese culture, and his characters reflect old Chinese habits of secrecy, stoicism and self-important paternalism, as well as the modern combination of excitement and uncertainty at signs of coming change. The mixing of old and new, Eastern and Western , often yields amusing results in Dalton's hand. A Taiwanese man who introduces himself by his chosen English name, `Ponic,' proudly insists that it is well-known and respected name, not realizing that he has simply mangled the spelling of his favorite American car, a Pontiac.

Vincent's initial sense of purpose as a Christian missionary, with straightforward and moralistic answers for everything, seems at first to protect him from the quicksand of the unknown. He disdainfully spurns an offer from a Taiwanese businessman to pay $10,000 for Vincent to go to Western China and pretend to marry a particular almond-eyed young woman in order to bring her back to Taiwan for the businessman, who himself is prevented from travel by Taiwan-China tensions. Yet Vincent's resolve collapses under unforeseen circumstance, and it makes him more human. He falls for a high school student named Trudy, a quirky and socially inept girl with firm round breasts and a passion for kissing. Vincent knows it would be reckless to sneak Trudy to his room inside the Ministry House. But he can not stop thinking about what lies beneath her blouse, and he succumbs, again and again.

Once the two are discovered, Trudy's father exiles her to a boarding school and her brother beats Vincent in a scene that is described in skull-numbing detail. Small-town gossip instantly robs Vincent of the standing to be a teacher of English, let alone of spiritual pursuits. Suddenly the offer to leave Taiwan for China, with a pocketful of cash, does not seem so terrible. Vincent is soon on his way. And this is just the beginning of the tale. It moves to mainland China and proceeds at an exhilarating pace, with moments of harrowing danger and soul-searching reveries about the meaning of passion and loneliness and faith. Ultimately, `Heaven Lake' offers a touching meditation on the vagaries of love.

When Vincent reaches Heaven Lake, a gorgeous body of water in the mountainous desert of Western China, he has an epiphany about the meaning of life that ought to be the climax of the book. This is the only place Dalton stumbles, however, and his protagonist's insight inexplicably fades, without altering the trajectory of the story as it should. No matter. Dalton has an intoxicating ability to infuse simple scenes with considerable depth of human emotion. His characters are richly drawn. His throwaway references are delicate and revealing. In the end, `Heaven Lake' is a winning novel for the way that Dalton lets his characters fumble and survive moments of choice in a wobbly manner that is recognizably human.