ABOUT
THE BOOK

Waxwings is set in Seattle at the turn of the millennium, when the high-tech Gold Rush threatens to overwhelm the actual world with its myriad virtual alternatives.
Two immigrants, though, are drawn here by more traditional versions of the American Dream. For Tom Janeway-a Hungarian-born Englishman-it is the wife and son he thought he’d never have. For an illegal alien-Chick, as he comes to call himself-it is the land of opportunity he’d imagined back in Fujian province. Given the overheated service economy, mutual need introduces the writer-professor-NPR-commentator to this enterprising handyman, and each soon finds himself strangely dependent on the other. Because meanwhile, all around them, people are busily charting futures that are obscure to, or exclude, anyone else.
Waxwings masterfully depicts the social realities of a boomtown in flux, as well as the illusions that distract its inhabitants from the most basic human impulse: to create a place we can call home. This is what Chick dreams of achieving, and what Tom must suddenly struggle to preserve. As the NASDAQ index spirals upward, street riots break out, a terrorist is arrested, a child disappears, a jetliner goes down-and the city, rimmed with feral countryside, begins to emerge in its true colours.