Straw Shoes

In Straw Shoes, Mathias B. Freese tells the story of Ah Ling, a 19th-century Chinese farmer who gambles with Fate and leaves his fields for the brutal promise of Gold Rush–era San Francisco. He trades yielding soil for unyielding granite—farming rock instead of rice, survival instead of certainty.

But this is more than a tale of immigration and hardship. It is a meditation on duality: soil and stone, anchor and ascent, softness and strength. As the Tao Te Ching teaches, the weak may overcome the strong; the humble earth may outlast defiant rock. Restless and yearning for completion, Ah learns instead that life is accretion—laying track piece by piece, being rather than becoming.

Rich with Freese's signature dialogues, mentor pairings, and metaphysical turns, Straw Shoes speaks in a voice both youthful and ancient. Written across decades—by the man Freese was and the elder he became—this final work resonates with hard-won wisdom. The farmer who hews cliffs mirrors the author who has weathered time: softer in insight, harder in truth.

Spare, symbolic, and deeply human, Straw Shoes is a powerful farewell from a singular literary voice—one that still speaks, long after the last page.

About the Author
MATHIAS B. FREESE is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist who has authored nine books. After his first novel, The i Tetralogy on the Holocaust, his second work, I Truly Lament: Working Through the Holocaust, won the Beverly Hills Book Award, Reader's Favorite Book Award, and was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards, the Paris Book Festival, and the Amsterdam Book Festival. In 2016, Tesserae: A Memoir of Two Summers, his first memoir, received seven awards. The following year, his second memoir appeared, And Then I Am Gone. In 2019, Nina's Memento Mori, a highly regarded memoir, was published. In 2022, Freese published Again. Again and Again: Awakening into Awareness — Essays and Stories, and then in 2024, he published In the Throes.

Praise for Straw Shoes

A poignant, heartfelt, and enlightening work of fiction, Author Mathias Freese’s Straw Shoes is a must-read historical fiction story that blends metaphysical themes with genre fiction -Anthony Avina, Author

Rich in symbolism and metaphor throughout, with a veneer of Eastern spirituality and a sprinkling of leitmotifs, the narrative is crafted with impeccable skill and a deceptively light touch, as it begins to take on allegorical proportions. -Rose Auburn, Author

MATHIAS B. FREESE is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist who has authored nine books. After his first novel, The i Tetralogy on the Holocaust, his second work, I Truly Lament: Working Through the Holocaust, won the Beverly Hills Book Award, Reader's Favorite Book Award, and was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards, the Paris Book Festival, and the Amsterdam Book Festival. In 2016, Tesserae: A Memoir of Two Summers, his first memoir, received seven awards. The following year his second memoir appeared, And Then I Am Gone. In 2019, Nina's Memento Mori, a highly regarded memoir, was published. In 2022, Freese published Again. Again and Again: Awakening into Awareness - Essays and Stories, and then in 2024 he published In the Throes.