Memoir of Misfortune by Su Xiaokang

The BN synopsis of the book is: "In the 1980s, Su Xiaokang, a young journalist, wrote the script for a six-part television series, River Elegy, which probed so deeply into the core of Chinese beliefs and values that it galvanized the entire country in an explosion of intellectual debate. Having survived the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, he now became the focus of a massive pursuit as one of the regime's five most wanted "criminals," and was smuggled out of China, leaving behind his wife, Fu Li, and their young son. After two long years and great international pressure, the family was finally reunited in Princeton, New Jersey. For a brief time, it seemed as if the worst was behind them. But on June 4, 1993 -- exactly four years after Tiananmen -- while the family was being driven to Niagara Falls, the car they were in sped off the road. When Su Xiaokang regained consciousness, he discovered that Fu Li was in a coma, from which she would eventually emerge unable to speak or to control her limbs. "

This book is so much more than that, we join the author's journey through his guilt for his wife's injuries, trying to reconnect with his tween son who is becoming more Americanized, and his spiritual discovery coming from an atheist China, to discovering what faith and spirituality means to each individual. We also learn from the letters written from Fu Li to her husband in exile and from her journal entries when she first arrived in America, what life was like for her prior to the accident that changed their lives. The only criticism is that I feel that some of this novel may have been lost in the translation from Chinese to English.