Fic­tion

For­eign Seed

Alli­son Alsup
September 4, 2023

Equal parts mys­tery and epic nov­el inspired by his­tor­i­cal events, For­eign Seed plunges read­ers into the search for a man who seems to van­ish out of thin air. 

Chi­na, June 1918. When the explor­er Frank Mey­er sud­den­ly dis­ap­pears from a fer­ry on the Yangtze Riv­er, Amer­i­can Vice-Con­sul Samuel Sokobin is tasked with find­ing the miss­ing man. By the time Sokobin receives the case, four days have passed since Mey­er was last seen on the vast riv­er. With no clues to guide his search and fear­ing fail­ure in his new post as a man of rank, Sokobin heads upriv­er with Mr. Lin, a Chi­nese inter­preter he’s nev­er met. The inves­ti­ga­tion soon turns deeply per­son­al for Sokobin, who can’t help but con­flate Meyer’s fate with that of his own dar­ing younger broth­er — a fight­er pilot gone MIA in the world war. As Sokobin con­tin­ues to search for answers, this men­tal con­nec­tion threat­ens to break him, and he’s forced to con­tend with the biggest ques­tion of all: what do we do when the answers we most des­per­ate­ly seek are the very ones that elude us? 

A sweep­ing tale of loss and grief, For­eign Seed is a mov­ing tes­ta­ment to friend­ship, faith, and the resilience of the human spir­it. Alli­son Alsup’s exquis­ite­ly researched debut nov­el will stay in read­ers’ hearts and minds long after they’ve turned the last page.

chi­na
friend­ship
fam­i­ly & relationships

Discussion Questions

Inspired by true events, For­eign Seed by Alli­son Alsup fol­lows the jour­ney of Jew­ish Amer­i­can Vice-Con­sul Samuel Sokobin into the jun­gles of Chi­na, after he is tasked with locat­ing miss­ing explor­er Frank Mey­er, a renowned seed col­lec­tor. The mis­sion soon becomes per­son­al as Sokobin begins to equate Mey­er with him­self, his deceased father, and his broth­er, a pilot who has gone miss­ing dur­ing WWI. All the while, Sobokin grap­ples with hid­ing his Jew­ish iden­ti­ty in order to suc­ceed in a world of qui­et but wide­spread antisemitism.

Alsup’s writ­ing is lush and evoca­tive, draw­ing clear com­par­isons to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness, as she deft­ly explores themes of anti­semitism, white-pass­ing priv­i­lege, and ambigu­ous loss. As Sokobin trav­els up the Yangtze Riv­er, and the answers he seeks regard­ing Mey­er and his broth­er grow more elu­sive, he redis­cov­ers the faith inher­it­ed from his father. And, as the sun sets over the Yangtze, read­ers will find them­selves won­der­ing who the for­eign seed is in this sto­ry, and what exact­ly is being cultivated.

Bril­liant in its com­plex­i­ty, propul­sive in its sto­ry­telling yet time­less enough to feel rel­e­vant to mod­ern-day read­ers, For­eign Seed by Alli­son Alsup shows that Jew­ish authors can cre­ate deeply com­pelling works of lit­er­ary mer­it that remain engag­ing and acces­si­ble to a wide spec­trum of readers.

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