The City Is a Rising Tide

Comments: Very tight clean copy.

Synopsis: This dazzling novel from a fiercely talented young writer — winner of the 2001 National Magazine Award for Fiction — follows a woman whose indelible crime of passion leaves no one and nothing unscathed. The City Is a Rising Tide unfolds against a stunning backdrop of history, culture, and landscape — from the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze to the refined vistas of Central Park, from the Cultural Revolution to the surreal world of moviemaking. In New York City, Justine Laxness works as a money manager at a nonprofit, the Aquinas Foundation. Justine's love for her boss, Peter, is unrequited, despite their deep friendship and extensive history: they first met in the early 1970s, when Justine was a child living in Beijing with her Christian family. Peter, then twenty-eight and stationed in China while working for Richard Nixon, had fallen in love with Justine's nanny, Su Chen — a Communist revolutionary under Mao — and still feels guilt for his part in her disappearance and death.

Justine's obsession with Peter spurs her to embezzle funds from Aquinas and lend the money to James Nutter, a screenwriter and old college flame who has resurfaced in Justine's life after ten years. But every action she takes will have unforeseen ramifications, creating a tidal wave of betrayal and destruction. Lyrical and suspenseful by turns, The City Is a Rising Tide is an enchanting work of luminous prose and uncommon imagination.