Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill

Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill

A daring novel of culture, history, and heredity, hailed as "extravagant and absorbing" (Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife)

A Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year

In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a dangerous rescue effort draws the attention of the entire country. A two-and-a-half-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft. It is as if all hope for life on the planet is bound up in the rescue of this little girl, the first and only child of a young woman of Finnish extraction and her Chinese-American husband.

The novel takes a breathtaking leap back in time to visit Ursula's most remarkable ancestors: a third-century-B.C. Chinese alchemist; an orphaned playmate of a seventeenth-century Swedish queen; Professor Alabaster Wong, a Chautauqua troupe lecturer (on exotic Chinese topics) traveling the Midwest at the end of the nineteenth century; her great-great-grandfather Jake Maki, who died at twenty-nine in a Michigan iron mine cave-in; and others whose richness and history are contained in the induplicable DNA of just one person--little Ursula Wong.

Ursula's story echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that her very existence--like ours--comes to seem a miracle. Ambitious and accomplished, Ursula, Under is, most of all, wonderfully entertaining.

Ingrid Hill is the author of the short story collection Dixie Church Interstate Blues. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa and has twice received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has twelve children, including two sets of twins. She lives in Iowa City.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780143035459
ISBN 10	0143035452
Title	Ursula, Under
Author	Ingrid Hill
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2005-06-28
Number of pages	512
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.