Land of Milk and Honey

For the next five years, the narrator lives in Paris. The failure of the Mars rocket causes other wealthy people to reconsider leaving the planet. Instead, they fund research until scientists discover a dandelion species that can clear the smog. When the narrator’s former employer is found guilty of murder for the rocket accident, reporters find her. She issues a public apology for working at the mountain facility and privately donates seeds and information that she stole. Former mountain residents characterize the narrator as a good cook who didn’t know about her employer’s larger plans.

The narrator opens an Italian Chinese fusion restaurant, which becomes a chain. Younger cooks, who don’t have access to good ingredients, eventually come up with more innovative dishes and outshine the narrator. Then, she becomes a restaurant investor, seeking to satiate her palate. The US border reopens, and she is able to take her cat back to California before he passes.

Ten years after the explosion, the narrator watches a documentary on the mountain community, seeing the faces of various diners. In interviews, the narrator claims that Aida wasn’t like the rest of them, but the media twists the narrator’s words so much that she stops giving interviews.

She falls in love with a woman who works in public relations, does leftist activism, and is religious. This lover convinces the narrator to become a philanthropist and an ovo-lacto vegetarian. After they break up, the narrator goes back to eating meat again, and her lover becomes a member of Congress.

The narrator, “by accident” (223), has a child. She raises her daughter alone, quits smoking, and eats healthier. Eventually, the narrator creates a foundation for young female cooks, which offers free classes and training, as well as awards. One day, her daughter asks about the narrator’s time on the mountain. The narrator says that it was long ago and doesn’t have anything to add to the existing discourse. Her daughter is satisfied with this, as long as the narrator cooks her pancakes.

The narrator’s daughter becomes a journalist at the LA Times. Mother and daughter go on a trip through Europe. In Milan, the daughter finds an article about a child murdered by a wealthy socialite and admits that she’s been doing research on the mountain community. The women discover the child’s name and learn that the narrator’s employer never gave the child’s family any money. The narrator sends bread and the amount that her employer said he would’ve sent, adjusted for inflation, to the child’s family. With her daughter’s help, the narrator remembers more details about her time in the land of milk and honey. Her daughter believes that she wouldn’t have been born if the narrator hadn’t worked on the mountain and that Aida isn’t a terrible monster.

After the narrator’s daughter leaves Italy, the narrator finds a field full of cicadas and contemplates the rumors surrounding their de-extinction. Locals claim that a saint brought back the cicadas; they’ve built a statue that looks a little like Aida but has been worn down with time. It is 39 years after Aida released the insects.

After her daughter gets married, the narrator has a stroke but recovers. For the rest of her life, she visits Beijing and Seoul in January of each year, looking for Aida.