Lyn Liao Butler’s parents are from Taiwan, and often Taiwanese culture and food are featured in her novels, but in her newest novel, “The Fourth Daughter,” we are immersed in Taiwan, both in its crowded, colorful present and in its violent and politically fraught past. We meet two strong women, Liv Kuo, a chef in New York who is suffering from PTSD because of an extremely traumatic incident in the restaurant she worked at, and her grandmother, Yi-ping, who moved back to Taiwan after living in the US with Liv’s family for many years, helping to raise her grandchildren.
Liv and Yi-ping, her Ah-Ma (grandmother), are very close. But Liv has been lying to Ah-Ma about her life since the incident, and while she tells her grandmother that her life is back to normal, Liv really doesn’t leave her apartment. She’s been on leave from the job she loved as she can’t bear the thought of going back to the restaurant’s kitchen where the violence took place. Ah-Ma knows that something is wrong, and she tells Liv that she needs her help. Ah-Ma needs Liv to come to Taiwan and help her with something vitally important.
What Ah-Ma never shared with her family is that her youngest daughter, Yili, was brutally torn away from her family when she was eighteen months old and given to another family. Ah-Ma was in a loveless marriage, and her husband was angry when their fourth child was born because it was another girl. When Ah-Ma finally gave birth to her fifth child, a son, her husband stole his youngest daughter away a month later and gave her to another family to be a future bride to their son. This was not an uncommon practice.
Ah-Ma went crazy when she discovered what her husband had done. They lived in a family compound with all her husband’s family, his parents and siblings, their children. No one would help Ah-Ma, and after a few days, her crazed behavior made her sister-in-law caution her that if it continued, her husband or his parents could make her leave the family. In 1960s, in Taiwan, as in many other parts of the world, women had no rights. Ah-Ma couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from all her children, so she behaved.
For years, Ah-Ma searched for her daughter, but to no avail; and finally, decades later, she managed to escape Taiwan and follow her children to the US. There she lived for many years until the death of her husband, when she decided to return to Taiwan to live out her life. But one day, in line at the market, she saw a woman she knew was her daughter. But the woman, now in her sixties, didn’t recognize the name Yili and hurried away.
So Ah-Ma asks Liv to come and help her find the missing Yili. She has lived with the loss of her daughter for too long, and she is desperate to find her. Liv knows that she needs to do this. She needs to leave her apartment and venture out and help her grandmother. For both their sakes.
What follows is a touching and heartfelt story in which the narration is divided between the present, as we follow Liv and Ah-Ma as they search for Yili, and the past. Ah-Ma relates her history, her marriage, how she was befriended by Ziyi, a strong, intelligent, and determined women who was also married to a powerful man in what we learn is the political party in power, KMT. Their control over Taiwan was ruthless. People who voiced dissenting opinions were jailed and often executed. Doctors, lawyers, professors, all disappeared. And both Ziyi and Ah-Ma were married to men whose families were part of KMT; both men were devoid of compassion, ruthless and violent.
The story is gripping from the start, and Butler’s brilliant use of first person narrative from different characters, each narrative clearly labeled as to name and date, allows us to see and feel what the characters do. The different pieces, the shocking and at times heartbreaking, events, all keep the pages turning. The paradox is that while this is a page-turner, Butler also manages to share so much information about Taiwan and its history, politics, culture, misogyny, and cruelty, while also sharing the good, the people who fought against the violence and for democracy, the incredible food, the scenic markets and family compounds.
My head is still spinning trying to assimilate all the information about Taiwan that I never knew, while my heart still feels the pain suffered by Ah-Ma and Ziyi from the abuse they suffered at the hands of the men they married.
The ending is beautifully done and heartwarming, but doesn’t erase the light that Butler shines on all the wrongs that were perpetrated on women. While Ah-Ma’s husband stole her child away, Ziyi’s husband beat her brutally. After one of the beatings, Ziyi says women have no rights. Ah-Ma realizes that they can’t leave their abusive husbands, husbands who take away their children or violently abuse them. And she ponders which type of abuse is worse.
Butler does not shrink from depicting the cruelty of those in the KMT political party. Ziyi is afraid to contact Ah-Ma in America because she believes the KMT had reach there and could harm Ah-Ma even a continent away. “Professors, known pro-democracy advocates, were assassinated on American soil.” Butler writes about one incident in Taiwan in which there was “the massacre of a prominent pro-democracy politician’s family.” Ziyi relates, “I had nightmares about the six-year-old twin girls of the jailed man who were stabbed to death, as well as his mother. What kind of country did we live in that they would murder innocent children and women?”
Butler also points out the Taiwanese instinct to hide mental illness as something shameful, often with fatal results. Even Liv, with her PTSD, must overcome her reluctance to seek help for her fears and trauma.
This is definitely Lyn Liao Butler’s most powerful, impactful novel thus far. The wonderful complexity of not just the plot, but the characters, the time periods, the history, and the culture make this a story that will not quickly be forgotten. It’s a wonderful book club choice for those reasons, but also because of the many provocative themes that Butler presents, including issues of misogyny, women’s rights, abuse, loss, the choices we make, and how far we will go to ensure our loved ones are safe.
Other fabulous books by Lyn Liao Butler include “What Is Mine,” “Someone Else’s Life,” “Red Thread of Fate,” and “Crazy Bao You.”
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.