Straw Shoes

by Mathias B. Freese

Rating: *****

In his final work, set in the nineteenth century, Freese tells the story of Ah Ling, a thirty-year-old Chinese farmer from Taishan province in China. 

Existentially restless, Ah wants to experience the full texture of his life before it is too late. Embracing fate's vagaries, he leaves the soil behind, takes passage to San Francisco, and decides to carve out his own destiny as a coolie, hewing rock for railroads, a fraught, perilous reality that forces Ah to confront the raw friction of survival in all its brutal physical and psychological dimensions…

Freese originally wrote Straw Shoes in his early 30s. Some fifty years later, he revisited it, a much older man with five decades of lived experience effectively co-authoring with his younger self. Freese seamlessly blends youthful energy with elderly wisdom. This fascinating cross-era collaboration has not only brought a spellbinding story to light but also added profound nuance to the narrative.

Indeed, dualities, dichotomies, and pairings in all their figurative and literal guises permeate Straw Shoes. The novel opens with Ah Ling walking in his fields, a sense of philosophical disquiet nagging him. Freese writes with sublime simplicity. His words have a poised, exquisite quality that feels timeless, and he magically plays to the reader’s senses.

The first part of the novel appears gently suffused with straw-colored light and soft earthiness. It’s a painterly portrayal of the landscape, lending the captivating impression of being half-dreamed while evoking the historical atmosphere and cultural mores of 19th-century China with compelling ease.

Ah Ling is a complex, searching, and persistently self-reckoning character. Freese renders him with single-minded honesty, and although Ah Ling’s decision to leave his family could, in a lesser writer’s hands, seem self-indulgent, it does not.

Freese delicately embroiders Ah Ling’s inner turmoil with visceral emotion and candor. The central character’s ontological unease is a sharply relatable and enduring concept, and Freese has placed it within a wondrously imagined framework.

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.

Nonetheless, Straw Shoes can be read on a purely surface level as an intriguing tale of one man taking an enormous gamble, and Freese controls plot and pace superbly. It’s a riveting story, entirely free from pretension or pomposity and effortlessly absorbing to read.

All of the characters are acutely observed, with some achingly lovely descriptions. Each serves purpose and pivot for Ah Ling’s decision, no matter how briefly they appear, such as the wandering sage Poy Chin, friend of Ah Ling’s father, Yin. Poy Chin is instrumental in ensuring Ah Ling views his father as more than a physical husk.

Ah Ling’s dynamic with younger brother Wu is, initially, fraternally fiery but matures satisfyingly. His marriage with insightful wife, Mai, feels freighted with fatality and her intrinsic awareness of such, from the start. 

However, it’s his friendship forged against the unforgiving rockface of Cape Horn with Yu-lan, the coolie foreman, that has the most impact in the second part of the novel. Although the latter half, set first in San Francisco and then against the granite, is as austere as the fields in Taishan are lush, Ah Ling eventually thrives and flourishes. The passages where he swings into the mountain’s cut are breathless with exhilaration and shot through with reckless energy.

Overall, Straw Shoes unfolds through Ah Ling’s third-person perspective, although Freese occasionally lets the reader glimpse other characters’ aspects. It’s an omniscient view rather than a close one, and in places, a knowing, slightly arch tone softly punctures the narrative, as if to remind the reader of Fate’s role in Ah Ling’s journey. This role is ultimately fulfilled with pathos and a cinematic rush of violence.

Among the multiple tiers of meaning contained within the novel, its title possibly has the most powerful connotations, a moniker whose interpretations deftly and poignantly evolve as the novel progresses.

Flawlessly edited, Straw Shoes is a hauntingly beautiful little novel written with mesmerizing clarity. Brilliantly wrought, finely calibrated, and gossamer-layered, Freese’s decision to finalize and publish this novel was a shining one, securing its place in the Freese canon as, quite possibly, its magnum opus.  

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