The Third Son

by Julie Wu

Genres: Coming of Age

Synopsis

“Clear your schedule! The Third Son is your next obsessive read. Julie Wu’s book reads like an instant classic.”  —Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine

In the middle of a terrifying air raid in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Saburo, the least-favored son of a Taiwanese politician, runs through a forest for cover. It’s there he stumbles on Yoshiko, whose descriptions of her loving family are to Saburo like a glimpse of paradise. Meeting her is a moment he will remember forever, and for years he will try to find her again. When he finally does, she is by the side of his oldest brother and greatest rival.

In Saburo, author Julie Wu has created an extraordinary character, determined to fight for everything he needs and wants, from food to education to his first love. The Third Son is a sparkling and moving story about a young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program.

“An appealing coming-of-age story packed with vivid historical detail.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“A boy growing up in Japanese-occupied Taiwan in the 1940s will do anything to escape his tormenting  family and reconnect with his first love in this compelling   work of fiction.” —O: The Oprah Magazine

“Deceptively simple, deeply compelling . . . An unusually awful sibling rivalry, a stunningly pure and inspiring love story.”  —The Boston Globe

“Wu presents an alluring story that hits all the right emotional buttons and maintains readers’ empathy from the first page to the last.” —Kirkus Reviews

Release date: April 30, 2013

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Listening to Dad

A Note from the Author

I was thirty-five and expecting my own child by the time I listened—truly listened—to my father. I had been trying to write a Taiwan-based novel and could not, despite years of effort, make it work. I needed to interview him.

He greeted me at his door with his usual kiss on the cheek.

“So, where do you want me to start?” my father joked as I set up my tape recorder. “When I was a baby?”

I laughed, almost convinced to dismiss his childhood entirely. But I said, “Yes.”

He leaned his head back in his recliner and the smile dropped from his lips. His jaw, square and handsome as any Hong Kong movie star’s, set so a muscle bulged in front of his ear. Beside him were shelves filled with our old books and board games, and behind him, picture windows showcasing the lush New England landscape, the pine trees tiered in shades of green.

He stared straight ahead, his voice gravelly. “My memories of my childhood,” he said, “are not exactly happy.”

THE BEATINGS SHOULD not have surprised me. My parents, especially my mother, had always implied that my father had not been loved as a child.

But I had never known the details. For a sixth-grade biography assignment, I had inscribed his birth date in my composition book, followed by his schools, his immigration to America. “Junior college in Taiwan,” he said. “And then PhD in America. Not so easy.”

“Your father’s a remarkable man,” my sixth grade teacher said, handing back my composition book, and I looked up at her in wonder. My father was an electrical engineer who was home every day at 5:16 p.m. He liked bad puns and dozed through all my orchestra performances. The one way he differed from my friends’ dads was his knowledge of, seemingly, everything. One summer he single-handedly poured the concrete foundation for an attached storage room, then topped the room with a deck, complete with built-in benches and room for a picnic table, grill, and bug-zapper.

We did not always see eye to eye. After college, instead of applying to medical schools, I applied to opera performance programs. My father declared that artists were parasites of society.

“All Chinese parents just want their children to be doctors!” I said.

“That’s not true!” he said. “I didn’t want it for your sister and brother. Only you.”

And yet it was during that nadir in our relationship—as I sat at the worn formica counter in my parents’ kitchen—that an image came to my mind of a lonely, unhappy little boy on the floor of his parents’ house in Taiwan. The image was so vivid that I rushed to write it down, to describe the dark floorboards, musty and worn, and the sandalwood-scented dust. I didn’t know where the image came from. But suddenly, I knew what it was to write.

I started a novel about that boy. I planned a masterwork of high drama, of romance and pathos and sociological importance. I wanted a hero slaying a dragon. I absolutely did not want to write a book about my bourgeois mom and dad.

But I needed background on Taiwanese customs. I jotted down some questions and called my parents from Bloomington, Indiana. Their answers shocked me.

“I never told you I had a brother who died—”

My great grandfather had sold my grandmother for complaining too much. My uncle picked up a bag of family money at the bank and found it transformed into foil-wrapped chocolate. My mind reeled. How boring and small my novel now seemed. I stopped asking questions and abandoned the book entirely.

I also left Indiana and went to medical school. I needed to experience more of life.

“MY MOTHER WOULD hide behind the door,” my father said, continuing in his gravelly voice. “Before I got to the door, I already knew what’s coming, what to expect,” he said. “I don’t recall I ever lucked out.”

My own mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen, and as the savory smells of ginger and cloves wafted downstairs, my father continued staring ahead, telling me that he had, in one of the town’s wealthiest households, become malnourished enough to require medical treatment for a year.

It was my mother, he told me, who had been the first to believe in him, to get him to believe in himself. If not for her, he would never have come to America.

AT HOME, I played back the recording of the interview. The microphone, to my horror, had been inadequate and I had to turn the volume all the way up on my stereo. I typed it all out right away, before I could forget it.

I never had a role model. What a father was supposed to be like with a child and so forth . . .

I did have a role model. What a miracle that was.

I had my book. And through the years, my book became that novel of drama, romance, and pathos that I always wanted to write. I changed many facts—major ones—to increase the unity and drama of the story. But the emotional journey remains my father’s.

I can’t help thinking that my image of the sad little boy on that musty floor was my father. Perhaps, when our relationship was at its most strained, my mind intuited why and suggested a means—writing—for us to stay close. I had taken the image of the boy and tried to wrest it into telling my story. I had to grow up to let the boy tell his own story and to find out that he was, in fact, the hero I was always looking for. Because being home for dinner can be an act of grace. And a kiss at the door can be, for some, a feat braver than the slaying of any kind of dragon.

Questions for Discussion

1. Martial law in Taiwan was not lifted until 1987, and the first non-Nationalist president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-Ban, was elected in 2000. At the time of The Third Son, the history of Taiwan had been one of successive subjugation by one outside force after another. How does this historical context shape Saburo, his family members, and their relationships with one another?

2. When The Third Son opens, an American fighter pilot tries to kill Saburo. How does Saburo’s conception of America change over the course of the novel?

3. Saburo saves Yoshiko’s life more than once. In what ways does she save his?

4. Yoshiko’s father is also the third son in his family. How is his life’s journey similar to Saburo’s? How and why does his outcome differ from Saburo’s?

5. Saburo arrives in America expecting freedom. In what ways is he still encumbered? What must he do to gain his true freedom?

6. Some of Saburo’s character traits get him in trouble in Taiwan, but are advantageous in America. What are these traits, and how do they reflect the different societies?

7. Yoshiko has a very strong will to survive. How does this develop? In what ways does her role as a woman in Taiwanese society thwart her? How does she maneuver within that role to ensure her survival? Does she ever get in her own way?

8. As a child, Saburo often contemplates the sky. How does his relationship with the natural world represent his personal growth?

9. Professor Chen characterizes both Saburo and Toru as being aware of convention, but burdened by it. What does he mean by that? Are there examples in the book of people who are not aware of convention despite being burdened by it, or people who are aware of convention and are not burdened by it?

10. Professor Chen denigrates Saburo’s reverence for Japan. Why might Saburo have developed an idealized view of Japan, Taiwan’s previous occupier?

11. Saburo says: “In an oppressed society, there are three main means of survival. There is the farmer’s way, plowing on as he has for centuries, his hat shadowing his face. There is my father’s method, of opportunism. And then there are those who cannot or will not accept things as they are . . . they must either speak up or leave and seek freedom elsewhere” (page 99). Do you agree? How do the various characters in the book illustrate these modes of survival? Which mode do you think you would adopt in an oppressed society?

Other Algonquin Readers Round Table Novels

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“[A] highly entertaining literary thriller about fine art and foolish choices.” —Parade

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Heading Out to Wonderful, a novel by Robert Goolrick

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“A suspenseful tale of obsessive love.” —People

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When She Woke, a novel by Hillary Jordan

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“Chillingly credible . . . Holds its own alongside the dark inventions of Margaret Atwood and Ray Bradbury.” —The New York Times Book Review

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The Watery Part of the World, a novel by Michael Parker

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“A lush feat of historical speculation . . . A vivid tale about the tenacity of habit and the odd relationships that form in very small, difficult places.” —The Washington Post

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Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, by Daniel Wallace

This hilarious and wrenching, tender and outrageous, novel about a young man who wants desperately to know the truth about his elusive father—an indefatigable teller of tall tales—has been turned into a major motion picture and a Broadway musical. 

“A charming whopper of a tale.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune

“A comic novel about death, about the mysteries of parents and the redemptive power of storytelling.” —USA Today

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Wolf Whistle, a novel by Lewis Nordan

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Praise for The Third Son

“From the first page of her debut novel, Julie Wu effortlessly slips us into Saburo’s world—a life that begins in hardship and cruelty in 1940s Taiwan but eventually finds happiness and fulfillment in the American Dream. I was entranced by this tale of an immigrant who boldly makes a new future for himself out of the wreckage of a Dickensian childhood. The Third Son is about love lost, love regained, and—most of all—love’s endurance . . . A universal story that will have everyone cheering for Saburo and Yoshiko, two lovers whose faith in each other spans continents and oceans.” —David Abrams, author of Fobbit

“The perfect fusion of great storytelling, evocative settings, interesting characters and compelling ideas . . . A rich, highly satisfying read, ripe for discussion.” —Concord Monitor

“An appealing coming-of-age story packed with vivid historical
detail.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“This novel opens with a blast of machine-gun fire, as a schoolboy delivers a girl from death during World War II. Julie Wu spins a fable of borders—between childhood and adulthood, Taiwan and America. In deceptively simple prose, Wu evokes the heartache of people caught in the middle.” —Pagan Kennedy, author of Confessions of a Memory Eater

“Vivid and moving . . . Julie Wu’s beautifully written debut is a story of family and responsibility set in mid-20th-century Taiwan and the U.S.” —Shelf Awareness

“A really excellent novel . . . Remarkable . . . Compulsive reading . . . The author keeps you hooked with the last sentence of virtually every chapter.” —Taipei Times

“A complex but brisk read—part love story, part family saga.” —Boston magazine

“This novel has it all: mystery, family, the sweep of history, humor. Once you begin to read the story of Saburo Tong, you won’t be able to put it down.” —Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody’s Daughter

“Hopeful, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking, this novel leads readers through the identity crisis of both the young man and his homeland.” —The Banner

“A stunningly pure and inspiring love story . . . Deeply compelling.” —The Boston Globe

“A boy growing up in Japanese-occupied Taiwan in the 1940s will do anything to escape his tormenting family and reconnect with his first love in this compelling work of fiction.” —O: The Oprah Magazine

“You may have read other Asian American historical novels, but you’ve never read anything like Julie Wu’s affecting and emotional The Third Son. It’s one of the don’t-miss books of the year.” —Beth Fish Reads

“Wu presents an alluring story that hits all the right emotional buttons and maintains readers’ empathy from the first page to the last.” —Kirkus Reviews

“With great authority and skill, Wu depicts not just the grand events of the era, such as the Kuomintang (KMT)’s arrival in Taiwan and the brutal occupation that followed, but also the small, private moments of life . . . An excellent read.” —Fiction Writers Review

“A wonderful debut filled with compelling characters and riveting drama. Do not miss it.” —William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of The Lincoln Letter

“This electrifying story of human yearning, perseverance, and love introduces an unlikely hero who struggles to prevail against the limitations of his birth in embattled midcentury Taiwan. His experiences are authentically foreign, as we see post–World War II America through his eyes, and yet compellingly familiar, as he endures trials of mind, body, and spirit, persevering against brutal circumstances to risk everything for love and for his future. Wu’s storytelling is masterful.” —Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine

“An epic and beautiful debut. Wu had me rooting for her hero right from the very start. The Third Son is a novel of chances and choices, love and loyalty, hope and heartache. A magnificently inspiring story of one man’s odyssey to freedom.” —Carol Rifka Brunt, author of Tell the Wolves I’m Home

1

MY JOURNEY BEGAN WHEN the Americans bombed us, in 1943, because it was during the bombings that I met the girl.

I was eight years old. In the weeks before Taiwan was bombed, I sat on the floor while my father sat in his armchair by the radio in our great room. A cigarette burned between the massive fingers of his hand as he translated the Japanese imperial broadcasts for us.

I placed myself as far out of his reach as I could, just apart from my six brothers and sisters. We were all afraid of him; just the sound of his heavy steps on the front walk in the evening would scatter us like birds, flying off to disappear into the far corners of the house. Here, in forced proximity, we were silent, as unobtrusive as we could be, only our slippers making nervous scuffling sounds on the floor.

We all understood Japanese. Taiwan had been a Japanese colony since 1895. Japanese was our official language, and even our family name, Togo, was Japanese. But in our heads and in our home we spoke and were Taiwanese, descendants of the Mainland Chinese, and only my father understood the subtle nuances of Japanese language and culture that gave meaning to the official broadcasts.

My father’s eyes, set deep in his fleshy face, squinted in concentration. He had, at all times, well-regarded local figures at his side—the magistrate, a wealthy merchant, local village representatives—who nodded or gently disagreed, often to be chided into silence by my father.

“Valiant,” he said, scornfully shifting in his armchair. “That means they lost.”

My oldest brother, Kazuo, his appearance and intellect so fortunately for him like my father’s, smirked from the floor at my father’s side, where he knelt and neatly copied columns of kanji onto sheets of rice paper. Kazuo’s handwriting was much better than mine and had been even when he was younger than me, a fact that my mother was at all times eager to impress upon me.

. . . brave sacrifice at Guadalcanal . . .

“Hm!” my father exclaimed, taking his cigarette out of his mouth. “Getting slaughtered. The Americans shall attack us next.”

By the time we were advised to evacuate Taoyuan, my parents had already made inquiries into a house north of Taipei, near the farm where my mother was raised. It was in the same region where the actual Japanese were being sent, and my father therefore felt that it would be the safest. The house was large enough to accommodate my siblings and me, and all our preparations seemed to be in order. Then the owner of the country house changed his mind, saying that it was insulting to be offered such a low rent by such a wealthy family; he had made inquiries of his own about my parents and was not about to be taken for a fool.

The negotiations continued long after many of my classmates’ families had left Taoyuan for country houses of their own or to share. And so it was that I was still at school in Taoyuan the day of the air raid.

I was, as usual, looking out the window, ignoring the teacher’s lecture and the slow, constant burn of hunger in my belly. I wasn’t a top student like Kazuo, nor did I have a mind only for sports, like my second brother, Jiro. I was Saburo, the third son, and I recognized that I was different, somehow, from my brothers. I was different from these children all around me in their neat rows, filing their kanji into little boxes, contentedly reciting their arithmetic facts by rote. It was far more interesting to me, despite the real and ever-present threat of being struck by my teacher, to study the sky outside. I loved the sky, its boundless, lovely blue, the translucent ruffled pattern of clouds stretching across it. I watched the clouds drift ever so slowly north. And then I saw three tiny spots moving toward us beyond.

I jumped up. “Look!” I cried.

My teacher reached for her stick to strike me, but at the same time the air-raid siren went off. The class erupted in cries of alarm and we hurried to our places in line. It wasn’t the first air raid, and we all knew what to do. Some Japanese bureaucrat had decided that the best thing for a schoolchild to do when the town was being strafed was to run home.

The siren wailed overhead, and my schoolmates ran out into the street, holding their writing boards over their heads. In previous air raids I had done the same, but today I had seen the planes myself and could hear the bombs and machine-gun fire quite close by. The last thing I wanted to do was leave the shelter of the school. Heart thumping, I hung back in the doorway, but after all the children had left, the principal followed and locked the door behind her, shouting at me to leave.

I ran to the woods at the back of the school and made my way along a path through them. My heart hammered, but I was in no rush either to leave the cover of the trees or to get home. As shells exploded on our railroad tracks and bullets sprayed the roofs of our houses and schools, I made my way from tree to tree, calming myself with the smell of the damp earth and the moss, and the occasional scent of blossoms from peach trees, now scarce but once so pervasive that they had given the county its name, Taoyuan—“peach garden.”

And then I heard the distinct cry of a young girl.

I ran toward the sound and found one girl helping another one up. They both looked about eight, like me, with matching school uniforms and the short, severe haircuts required by the Japanese school system. The one who had fallen—the one who had cried out—looked down at her bleeding knee. The other one bent over her, looking at her friend’s wound. They both held their writing boards over their heads, as we had been taught to do during air raids.

“Are you okay?” I shouted.

They jumped and looked up at me in surprise. They were both very pretty and sweet looking in the dappled light, with wide, sparkling eyes, and they instinctively leaned their heads together.

“Are you okay?” I repeated more quietly as I drew near. “I heard someone cry.”

“I’m all right,” the girl with the bleeding knee said quietly. She blinked and looked down at her knee, her lower lip stuck out just a little. “I tripped over a tree root.”

A plane roared overhead and fresh rounds of machine-gun fire burst out, so that the girls clung to each other.

“See you tomorrow!” the bleeding girl said. She took off into the woods.

“Aren’t you going home with your sister?” I said to the other girl, who stood, watching the bleeding girl run away.

She shook her head and pointed, still holding her writing board on her head. “She’s not my sister. She’s my cousin. I’m going this way.”

She began to run, and I ran with her, even though she was headed away from my parents’ house. The planes were not directly over our heads, but we could hear them and their fire very well.

She glanced at me past her elbow, sections of her hair swinging over her pale face. “Why don’t you hold your board over your head?” she said. Then she tripped over a rock and almost fell.

I jumped to catch her arm. “Because it doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “See? You can’t even run that way.”

She straightened up, board in place. “But that’s what my teacher says we should do in an air raid.”

“I’ve seen bullets go through ceilings and walls,” I said. “What good is a writing board going to do?”

“Maybe it would slow the bullet down.” She continued on, walking this time, switching to hold her board with her other hand. “My teacher’s really nice. She brings me moachi. You see how hard the board is? It will protect me.”

“She brings you moachi?” The very thought that a teacher could be called “nice,” much less be a source of sweet treats, was completely alien to me.

“Yes, because I’m number one in the class!” She spoke proudly. “My father brings me moachi, too, when I study. He brings the ones from Japan because they’re better.”

“I don’t think they’re better,” I said, hungry at the thought of the gooey rice cakes. “I like the peanut ones the best.”

“Well, that’s true,” she said. “Those are the best.”

We reached the edge of the forest. There was a store-lined road a few hundred yards away across a clearing, and we stopped.

“Let’s wait,” I said. “The all-clear siren hasn’t gone off.”

“But I’m supposed to go home.”

“It’s safer to stay here.”

“My parents will worry about me.”

I listened for a moment, hearing only the leaves rustling overhead and the rushing of my pulse.

“They’ve gone away,” the girl said.

“Hou,” I said. “Quickly.”

We ran into the open field. Just as we reached the middle, a plane zoomed in from behind us. I jumped in terror, and the girl screamed, holding her writing board over her head with both hands. We had all heard of Americans shooting farmers in the field, of mowing down women carrying babies and market goods on their bicycles.

But when I looked up, I saw the Japanese flag painted on the fuselage. “It’s all right,” I shouted with relief. “He’s defending us.”

We stopped in the middle of the field at the awesome sight of the two planes dueling, swooping and firing and curving away over the heart of our town.

“Did you see that?”

“He got him, I think!”

And then one of the planes was trailing smoke out its side, and it swooped too low. We felt the crash through the ground with our feet.

When the other plane ro. . .