The Golden Land, by Elizabeth Shick, blends a complex plot, unfamiliar setting, and dual timeline to create an absorbing story. This alone would account for its selection by the AWP for its Novel Prize. But this is a debut novel goes beyond deft storytelling. It’s a tale of family tragedy, of romantic confusion, and of human survival, both physical and emotional.
Myanmar, where The Golden Land is primarily set, is a country closed to most of us. But with Shick as a guide, readers get to know its rich and gritty beauty intimately. (The author lived six years in Myanmar’s capital city, Rangoon, during the country’s few years of liberalism before 2021 when the authoritarian military regime cracked down in a coup d’état.)
The main character—Aye Tha Kyaw “Etta” Montgomery—is daughter of a Myanmar mother and American father. When the book opens, she’s a 26-year-old attorney living a seemingly typical American life in Boston with her fiancé. But Etta is actually torn between two cultures and haunted by confusing childhood memories of an aborted family visit to Myanmar.
In the opening chapter, Etta is dealing with the sudden death of her controlling and unpredictable Myanmar grandmother. Then her younger sister takes off for Rangon on what seems to Etta to be an impulsive mission. She feels compelled to follow, though she’s drawn as much by the memory of her first love as by concern over her impetuous sister. The trip offers Etta the chance to solve the mystery of why her family fell apart during a 1988 visit to the mother’s homeland.
As a story of personal relations, the novel offers a realistic and compelling look at both familial and romantic love and conflict. Where The Golden Land stands out, though, is how deftly Shick weaves in a second story line, one that connects both the main and secondary characters from start to finish and explores the question of how authoritarianism corrupts both communities and families—and how different people respond when they cannot escape a government’s oppression.
The Golden Land, released in September by the University of Nebraska Press, was particularly thought-provoking to read in this American election year, even more so than when Shick wrote it in the years before Covid and the dark days around January 6. It also encourages us to think about the lasting effects of authoritarianism on the individuals compelled to live under it—and on even those who escape.
Beyond that immediate context, though, what makes The Golden Land a superb novel is the sheer facility of Shick’s storytelling. The book smoothly carries us along the story lines that run from Boston to Myanmar over fateful periods in both 1988 and 2011. This complex story weave never confuses, and it wraps with an unexpected yet fitting twist in its last pages.
***
The Golden Land
by Elizabeth Shick
University of Nebraska Press, 324 p.
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