All over Creation

With a lifetime of careful nurturing of potatoes and seeds behind them, Lloyd Fuller and his Japanese wife, Momoko, have begun to feel the ravages of time. Their only daughter, Yumi, left home twenty-five years ago, and now they must attempt to consider the future of their precious yet fragile livelihood. Meanwhile a troupe of young revolutionaries are scouring the land in their faithful Winnebego, their eccentric, volatile lives focused on restoring farming practice to its basic beginnings and curbing genetic modification once and for all. As the 'Seeds of Resistance' come crashing into Fullers Farms so too does Yumi return to the fold, and the lives of Lloyd and Momoko are certain never to be the same again.

The three clans at once enabling and torturing each other in Ruth Ozeki's All Over Creation--the central Fuller family, the neighboring Quinns, and the rag-tag activist found-family known as the "Seeds"--lift a basic morality play about forgiveness to a higher level. But what really gives All Over Creation its steam and sends it off in unexpected directions is the supporting story of modern mankind's crucial but tenuous connection to nature, set in this case on a potato farm in sleepy Idaho.

Lloyd Fuller and his war-bride wife Momoko struggle to make their massive farm thrive. Teenage daughter Yumi, on the other hand, has no trouble blooming. She's a wild child, but a series of bad decisions lead to a protracted estrangement from her puritanical father. When, years later, the adult Yumi reluctantly returns to the farm with her three children to care for her ailing parents, she must confront the wreckage she left behind (and the wreckage she's made of her own life), while forging an uneasy peace with childhood friend Cass Quinn. Before long, the Fullers and the Quinns must also confront the radical environmentalist Seeds, who are convinced that dying Lloyd and delusional Momoko hold the key to propagating plant life on earth--and sidetracking the schemes of evil corporations--through smart farming. And they may be right. The abundant children on hand reinforce this theme of proper husbandry; they are, like nature, both a tremendous gift and a daunting responsibility. And while not every character--Yumi in particular--is likable, Ozeki, whose first novel was the funny and polemical My Year of Meats, provokes empathy through plain old humanity. Indeed, her ability to make us care deeply about the fate of these strangers is the book's most abiding grace. The story's conclusion takes some convenient outs, but the ride to the end is touching and terrific, thanks to the author's spare but elegant prose and, especially, her kaleidoscopic cast. --Kim Hughes, Amazon.ca