BOOK REVIEW: 'Riverbig,' By Aris Janigian (groong.usc.edu)

Terry Hong, Special to The Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle
March 23 2009
CA

Riverbig
By Aris Janigian
(Heyday Books; 248 pages; $21.95)

Far too many immigration stories begin with an escape from tragedy - everything from economic hardship to devastating wars. The Armenian American experience is tragically rooted in the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918, the systematic massacre of an estimated 1 to 2 million Armenians. A near-century later, the tragedy continues to fester with the Turkish government's continued refusal to acknowledge that genocide occurred.

Among the surviving diaspora, California's Central Valley proved to be an immigration destination for many families. Aris Janigian, a Fresno-born, second-generation Armenian American, introduced readers to such a family in his absorbing 2003 first novel, "Bloodvine," about two half-brothers torn apart by jealousy and misunderstanding. In the ensuing rift, the younger brother relinquishes his inheritance - his claim to the family grape farm - to the elder, whose bittersweet victory results in far greater loss.

The brothers' division looms large in Janigian's sequel, "Riverbig," which follows the separated life of younger brother Andy Demerjian, who is struggling to support his wife and two young sons at the novel's opening. Denied access to his own land, he scrambles for odd jobs, weighed down by growing debt, with temporary relief found in alcoholic stupor. Two simultaneous farming opportunities save Andy from bankruptcy: A widow offers her land for lease, while a school acquaintance returns from the big city to propose that Andy manage a nearby land parcel.

The hoped-for success of Andy the lone farmer is clearly what frames Janigian's new novel. What gives the story heart, however, is a redemptive journey for Andy the man: Uprooted from his land, his parents long gone and now irreparably estranged from his brother and business partner, Andy is left seemingly untethered to his Armenian immigrant farming community. As he tends someone else's soil while negotiating nature's difficult whims, so, too, must he nurture tenuous relationships in order to reclaim belief in his own self, as both a deserving family man and trusted friend.

At home, Andy finds growing solace in his family-by-marriage. He learns that honesty brings him closer to his beloved wife, Kareen, whom he thought he was protecting by hiding their financial distress. He recognizes the courage of his mother-in-law, Valentine, who was witness to the harrowing genocide and somehow survived with her humanity intact. While Valentine celebrates her American life, she longs to be reunited with her last daughter, whom she left behind in Egypt after fleeing the Turks. Andy recognizes her loss and works to make the family whole, even as he comes to accept his own legacy as the American-born son of a genocide survivor with a dubious past.

Andy begrudgingly accepts the manipulative widow whose land he leases, and risks her wrath to give time to her damaged but artistically gifted daughter. Even as he drinks too much, he stands by the local bar's owner, a fellow Armenian American struggling to stay afloat in an ever-changing new social order of loyal customers and aggressive buyers. He reluctantly hires and befriends two hard-working African American brothers - a potentially dangerous challenge in a closed, pre-civil-rights-era community - reluctant only because he knows their wages must come out of his own much-depleted pockets.

Andy's farming journey of plowing, planting and hopes for eventually harvesting tomatoes from one plot and corn from another, ironically brings him further from the land and closer to the people and events that comprise his very existence. "Abe," he says silently to his lost brother, "you can take the certainty of the farm, all you can handle, and I will take life, with all its shabby uncertainty."

source: groong.usc.edu

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