Across Mountains and Deserts was born from a simple but haunting idea: after long periods of violence, chaos, separation, and fear, human beings slowly begin to rebuild trust. Yet trust is rarely rebuilt in purity. One form of disorder is often wrapped inside another. Wounds remain. Suspicion survives. Memory continues to tremble beneath ordinary life.

​

And still, even in the middle of uncertainty, some people manage to create small spaces of protection. Fragile spaces. Temporary spaces. Beautiful spaces.

​

This novel is, in many ways, the story of such a space.

​

A father trying to protect his daughter after the mysterious disappearance of her mother. Grandparents preserving dignity and tenderness after decades shaped by political upheaval and personal loss. Siblings scattered across deserts, mountains, religions, and continents, somehow rediscovering one another after believing for years that the others were dead. A family learning to survive not by defeating chaos, but by building warmth inside it.

​

The “bubble” at the center of this story is not naïve. It does not deny history, grief, or danger. The mountains still keep their secrets. People still disappear. Faiths diverge. Nations separate families. Time transforms memory. But within this fragile enclosure of affection and responsibility, children continue to grow, meals are still shared, hair is combed in the morning, stories are told at night, and love quietly resists destruction.

​

Set between the glaciers of the Qilian Mountains, the deserts of Northwest China, the cities of Lanzhou and Qinzhou, the Gulf region, and Montreal, Across Mountains and Deserts explores the invisible threads connecting generations, cultures, and beliefs. Christianity, Islam, ancestral rituals, scientific research, migration, and modern urban life coexist within the same family history, not as contradictions, but as layers of survival.

​

George Chen writes with deep attention to emotional detail and ordinary gestures. Rather than presenting heroism through grand victories, the novel focuses on quieter acts of endurance: protecting a child, caring for aging parents, rebuilding after loss, continuing to love without certainty.

​

At its heart, this is not simply a story about tragedy or reunion. It is a meditation on continuity. On the human instinct to shelter others despite knowing how fragile every shelter truly is.

​

Perhaps every family, after enough storms, attempts to build its own invisible bubble.
A place where memory can survive.

A place where tenderness is still possible.