Spanning two decades and countless revolutionary developments, Aube Rey Lescure’s RIVER EAST, RIVER WEST is a poignant debut centered on two wildly different figures observing modern China and the startling similarities that draw them together.

As long as 14-year-old Alva can remember, it has been her and her blonde-haired, white mother, Sloan, against the world…or at least against China, the country her mother decided to call home even before welcoming Alva and entering a life of single motherhood. Half-Chinese and half-American, Alva has never quite belonged anywhere: not to China, where she is called "laowai," and certainly not to America, where her mother has vowed never to return. But her feeling of discomfort has never been quite so strong as it is now, as she sits at her mother’s wedding to Lu Fang, a wealthy Chinese businessman who, practically until the morning of the wedding, seemed like just another one of her mother’s “friends.” The year is 2007, and as far as Alva is concerned, her life and her partnership with her mother is over.

"This reverse-immigration story is both an intimate, poignant family drama and a sweeping, expansive chronicle of China’s political history as seen through the eyes of two people obsessed with the promise of the American Dream."

Like most teens, Alva has begun to bristle at the thought of her high school, where the only subjects that matter are Chinese, math and English, and where every lesson carries the weight of Communist ideals and inspiring quotes from Mao Zedong. Although Alva considers herself Chinese and balks at those who call her laowai, she also rolls her eyes at the heavily biased and skewed teachings and their focus on the Communist battle for China’s soul. Her only way out, she believes, is by attending the American School in Shanghai, which is for wealthy expats who she thinks will teach her real history, real acceptance and real fitting in. And what better way to get what you want than by misbehaving and dangling obedience as a bargaining chip with your brand-new, very wealthy stepfather?

Lu Fang, meanwhile, has his own story to tell, another tale of obsession with America and a rejection of Communist ideals. Alternating between Alva’s story in 2007 and Lu Fang’s as a young man in 1985, Lescure chronicles two decades of progress and setbacks in modern-day China. Lu Fang was born near the Yalu River’s North Korean border, and his childhood was marked by Chinese military outposts in search of river crossers and North Korean soldiers looking for defectors to execute.

A brilliant young man, Lu Fang never found himself moved or swept up by adoration for Marx, Engels or Lenin, preferring instead classical text and poems about epic battles, heroic men and legendary celebrations. In his tiny village, he is known as the one who will get away, who will bring wealth and recognition to his family and community. When he passes his entrance exam for Renmin University in Beijing, it seems that his future is set.

Then the spring of 1966 arrives, and denunciation posters start to paper the campus walls. That summer, the Cultural Revolution begins, and Lu Fang is called into a meeting to discuss his “rural reeducation” as decreed by Chairman Mao. He never steps foot inside a classroom again.

At first glance, the connections between Alva and Lu Fang are obvious: both are obsessed with American freedoms and the gateway of education, but they are equally proud of and in love with their country, even as they feel pushed to its farthest corners of belonging. But Lescure doesn’t stop connecting the dots here, chronicling instead the numerous ways that political and cultural advances both propel and stagnate her characters. Readers follow Alva to the American School and then Lu Fang through the fields, a planned marriage and, finally, his first encounter with the blonde-haired foreign woman who makes him feel seen.

In present day, Alva grapples with the contrast between her old life --- takeout and American films with her beautiful mother --- and her new one as the stepdaughter of a wealthy man, a role that puts her in the spotlight and starts to sever her relationships with her friends. This severing is mimicked by Shanghai’s own landscape, the Huangpu River, which separates Puxi (“River West”), Alva’s old life, from Pudong (“River East”), her new life with Lu Fang and her expatriate classmates.

As Alva joins the American School, she is shocked by the heady, electrifying trappings of expat life and its lack of restrictions. Her new friend, Zoey, introduces her to a world of maid service and summers in the Hamptons, and she is mesmerized. With the leadup to the 2008 Olympics simmering in the background, China is the destination for businessmen and tourists alike, and the fact that it is Lu Fang, Alva’s nemesis, bankrolling this new life never quite occurs to her. It is this contradiction, this dichotomy, that forms the throughline of the novel, giving each character --- but especially Lu Fang --- a bottomless, searching depth that makes China’s history sing.

Those fearing a boring history lesson should note that while Lescure’s research into modern-day China is meticulous, so too is her ability to distill massive overhauls of culture and politics into brief, educational snippets that place readers firmly in her setting without disrupting the narrative. It teaches as much as it delights, and in her yearning, delicately written characters, Lescure finds bountiful opportunities to meditate on belonging, cultural identity and the trappings of desire. This reverse-immigration story is both an intimate, poignant family drama and a sweeping, expansive chronicle of China’s political history as seen through the eyes of two people obsessed with the promise of the American Dream.

Immersive and deep, RIVER EAST, RIVER WEST is a perfect pick for book clubs and fans of Susie Yang's WHITE IVY and Lisa Ko's THE LEAVERS.