Straw Shoes

Published Copy

Genres

Multicultural Fiction, Persons of Color, Literary Fiction, Philosophical Fiction, Novels, and Historical

Trigger Warnings

Death

Type of Ending

Series

Not part of a series

Author Prefers A Review On

Goodreads or Amazon

Reader Spots Remaining

Number of days to read

Publication Date

Jun 9, 2026

Page Length

162 pages

Available Formats

ePub and PDF

Straw Shoes

Published Copy

Blurb

Ah Ling, a 19th-c. Chinese farmer, leaves his family to try his Fate in Gold Rush–era San Francisco.

In Straw Shoes, Mathias B. Freese tells the story of Ah Ling, a 19th-century Chinese farmer who gambles with Fate and leaves his fields for the brutal promise of Gold Rush–era San Francisco. He trades yielding soil for unyielding granite—farming rock instead of rice, survival instead of certainty.

But this is more than a tale of immigration and hardship. It is a meditation on duality: soil and stone, anchor and ascent, softness and strength. As the Tao Te Ching teaches, the weak may overcome the strong; the humble earth may outlast defiant rock. Restless and yearning for completion, Ah learns instead that life is accretion—laying track piece by piece, being rather than becoming.

Rich with Freese's signature dialogues, mentor pairings, and metaphysical turns, Straw Shoes speaks in a voice both youthful and ancient. Written across decades—by the man Freese was and the elder he became—this final work resonates with hard-won wisdom. The farmer who hews cliffs mirrors the author who has weathered time: softer in insight, harder in truth.

Spare, symbolic, and deeply human, Straw Shoes is a powerful farewell from a singular literary voice—one that still speaks, long after the last page.

Details

Genres

Multicultural Fiction, Persons of Color, Literary Fiction, Philosophical Fiction, Novels, and Historical

Trigger Warnings

Death

Type of Ending

Series

Not part of a series

Author Prefers A Review On

Goodreads or Amazon

Reader Spots Remaining

Number of days to read

Publication Date

Jun 9, 2026

Page Length

162 pages

Available Formats

ePub and PDF

Author

MATHIAS B. FREESE is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist who has authored eight books. After his first novel, 'The i Tetralogy' on the Holocaust, his second work, 'I Truly Lament: Working Through the Holocaust', won the Beverly Hills Book Award, Reader's Favorite Book Award, and was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards, the Paris Book Festival, and the Amsterdam Book Festival. In 2016 'Tesserae: A Memoir of Two Summers', his first memoir, received seven awards. The following year his second memoir appeared, 'And Then I Am Gone'.