{"product_id":"9781618731456","title":"The Invisible Valley: a novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eLu Beiping is one of 20 million young adults the Chinese government uproots and sends far from their homes for agricultural re-education. And Lu is bored and exhausted. While he pines for romance, instead he’s caught up in a forbidden religious tradition and married off to the foreman’s long-dead daughter so that her soul may rest. The foreman then sends him off to cattle duty up on Mudkettle Mountain, far away from everyone else.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu’s dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Invisible Valley\u003c\/i\u003e is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is truly deviant; about the relationships between the human and the natural, the human and the divine, the self and the other.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Small Beer Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47056454549744,"sku":"9781618731456","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781618731456_p0.jpg?v=1763854672","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781618731456","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}