All over Creation

Author: Ruth Ozeki
Publisher: Penguin 2004

Lloyd Fuller is a potato farmer in Idaho, and Yumi is his and his wife Momoko’s only daughter. There is only one school in the town, and it has classes up to grade 9. Cass Quinn was Yumi’s closest friend at school, and they were neighbors as well. 

When Lloyd had only a few acres, Momoko worked with him hand-in-hand. But, as he slowly expanded and accumulated 500 acres of potato land, Momoko started her own garden near the house.

As Cassie Quinn’s mother used to put it, “She may be yellow, but her thumb sure is green.” Over the years, Momoko’s garden grew into a vegetative wonder that no one has ever seen in the county. People drove miles to see her garden and buy seeds from her.

Lloyd helped Momoko with writing advertisements to sell her seeds.

Fullers’ Seeds

M. and L. J. Fuller—Seedsmen

Liberty Falls, Idaho

Vendimus Semina

Since 1984

To Our Customers:

As you know, Mrs. Fuller and I make it a policy only to sell open-pollinated seeds, which we encourage you, our customers, to grow, and save and multiply as you choose, in accordance with God’s plan.

That was the beginning of the advertisement.

After a brief and troublesome relationship with a teacher, Yumi ran away at the age of fifteen. Twenty-five years later, Cass contacted her to inform her that her father had several heart attacks, and her mother has dementia, so she has to come back to look after her parents. 

Yumi shows up with her three kids: one 14-year-old, one 8-year-old, and the other a toddler.

A few radical youths who saw Lloyd’s advertisement showed up at his house at the same time in a Winnebago.

Together, Yumi, her kids, the radical youths, Cass, and her husband Will try to help the ailing Fullers.

This is a very well-researched and well-written story. Ruth is a creative writer, and it shows. There is a smooth fluidity in the story, and you will get easily absorbed and float in it. It is a very feel-good story, very much Zen-like, even though there are some serious tragedies that engulf the characters in the story. I really enjoyed this book.

Ruth Ozaki is a Zen Buddhist priest and a professor of humanities. She reminds me a little bit of T. C. Boyle.