River of Dust

Join Virginia Pye as she discusses her new book "River of Dust."

On the windswept plains of northwestern China in 1910, Mongolian nomads swoop down upon an American missionary couple and kidnap their young child. In this story of retribution, these foreigners search for their lost son in a dangerous land that comes to haunt them and change not just what they believe but who they are.

River of Dust, Virginia Pye’s debut novel, was chosen by the Independent Booksellers Association as an Indie Next Pick for May. Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Robert Olen Butler, wrote that River of Dust, “is a remarkable novel in the ways that delight me the most: It has a compelling narrative voice, a dynamic story and a deep resonance into the universal human condition, all of which is inextricably bound together. This is a major work by a splendid writer.” Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans, called River of Dust, “a vividly imagined and beautifully drawn picture of the life of Christian missionaries in China in the early 20th century.”

Pye’s award-winning short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The North American Review, The Baltimore Review, and Tampa Review. In conjunction with the publication of River of Dust, her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Nervous Breakdown and The Rumpus. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and has taught writing at New York University and The University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, but was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is the daughter of prominent political scientist and sinologist, Lucian W. Pye.