Join Anderson’s Bookshop for an author event with Tom Lin, to celebrate the release of Babylon, South Dakota, on Thursday, June 4th at 7:00 pm in our Naperville store.
Event Format
We will begin checking you in approximately 30 minutes before the start time. After a presentation and Q&A with the author, the line will form in numbered order with the following guidelines:
No individual posed photos are allowed. Attendees may take candid pictures from their spot in line.
There is a limit of 2 books from home to be signed (unless otherwise stated)
There is a limit of 1 personalization (unless otherwise stated)
All events have open seating. The “Order Line Number” on your pdf ticket is your reserved place in the signing line. You will line up to meet the author based on that number.
If you cannot attend, you must pick up your book (if included with ticket) at the hosting store within 30 days of the event. We can ship that book to you for an additional charge of $9.99; please call the store to arrange that.
Pre-registration is required for this event because space is limited.
More about Babylon, South Dakota:
From the author of the Carnegie Medal in Fiction winner The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu comes a tantalizing, American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a powerful, mysterious, and morally dubious military secret shapes their lives.
"Lin's gossamer prose is patient and full of wonders."—Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams and An Oral History of Atlantis
When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara.
But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu’s farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America’s nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.
In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of "strangers in a strange land" to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.
TIME Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of the Year | Town & Country's Best Books of Spring 2026
About the Author:
Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he also holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. His first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.