Buddha Baby

Lindsay Owyang, the protagonist of Wong Keltner's second novel, is like the story itself: up-beat, bighearted, fun to spend time with and lacking focus. She works at two low-paying jobs and is "deluded enough to think her noncommittal career choices [qualify] as artistic." The drama starts when Lindsey's unofficial fiancé leaves town (a lovingly rendered San Francisco), and a childhood crush, Dustin Lee, arrives on the scene determined to seduce Lindsey. But Lindsey (a third-generation Chinese Californian) isn't attracted to Chinese men... or is she? The novel meanders through Lindsey's flirtation with infidelity and, more interestingly, her peeks into the history of San Francisco's turn-of-the-20th-century Chinatown, which make her suddenly aware of her heritage. Fans of Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things will enjoy her tripping wordplay ("his slice of life was not made completely of wonder bread") and spot-on description (a piano teacher's fingers resemble "waterlogged segments of baby corn"), but these pleasures are diluted with cheap-shot puns (wok this way) and implausible scenarios. These story lines gain momentum in the last third of the book, and though the stakes are never quite believable, Keltner ends with straight-from-the-heart emotional insight, an unexpectedly strong finish to an uneven read. (Sept.)