Straw Shoes

By Mathias B. Freese

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H3TQWVC3
• ISBN13: 9798887473680
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Wheatmark
• Length: 178 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"