The Middle Heart

The grace, passion and fidelity to historical detail that characterized her bestselling novel, Spring Moon, and the stark evidence of the suffering of contemporary Chinese that rendered her nonfiction Legacies so compelling, are combined in Lord's new novel, which authoritatively illuminates the travails of 20th-century China. In 1932, three youngsters from different social strata vow to remain forever ``blood brothers of the Middle Heart.'' Steel Hope, scion of the noble but impoverished House of Li; Mountain Pine, his lame ``bookmate'' (study companion) and servant; and Firecracker, the daughter of a gravekeeper, are to endure and share lives of turmoil and pain, loyalty and love. When the three meet again in 1940, Steel Hope plans to marry Firecracker, now an opera star named Summer Wishes, but as an innocent pawn in a web of administrative corruption, he soon must fake his own death and vanish, surfacing later as a cadre in Mao's revolution. Scholarly Mountain Pine, who also adores Summer Wishes, eventually weds her; later, Mountain Pine will make a supreme sacrifice, ensuring that their son will think of Steel Hope as his father. The vicissitudes of Mao's reign bring them prosperity, then misery: one is sentenced to a labor camp, another to a political prison and the third to forced-labor. While the love triangle ensures the reader's emotional involvement, Lord also vividly portrays the historical and social context of seven decades. She conveys the breakdown of moral order under Chiang Kai-shek's corrupt Guomindang, recalls the idealism that made the intelligentsia ardent adherents of the Communist Party; and depicts the growing disillusionment, paranoia and sheer horror of the ensuing years under Mao. Despite their tragic experiences, the three friends and lovers live out their life spans; the sacrifice is their shared son, who lacks the nurturing memories that keep his elders alive. Though it culminates with the crackdown at Tiananmen Square, the novel ends on a note of affirmation, in keeping with Lord's humane vision of courageous people who are victims of history. 100,000 first printing. (Feb.)