Paul Yee has built a respected career as a children’s and young-adult author, from the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning picture book Ghost Train to the contemporary LGBT YA novel Money Boy. The author, who holds a master’s degree in history, has written nearly 30 books, but is best known for chronicling the Chinese immigrant experience in British Columbia during the gold rush and the building of the railway in the late 19th century. With his first novel for adults, Yee endeavours to share this (still largely unknown) history with an older readership.

A Superior Man is told from the point of view of Yang Hok, a former railway worker (referred to as “coolies” in the novel) turned Victoria gambling-house bouncer who, 12 miserable years after leaving China, is determined to return home, and eventually seek his fortune in America. “At last, I was homeward bound. Time to perform a reverse salute: turn my back on Gold Mountain, bend forward, and release a caustic fart.”

Hok’s plans are scuppered when the native woman with whom he had a relationship three years earlier appears by his tableside in a Chinatown restaurant with a toddler in tow. The boy, Peter, is Hok’s son, and the woman, Mary, wants money. Now the wife of a man from her tribe, Mary is expecting another child. Hok, an unlikable character from the outset, responds by bolting, leaving the woman and child standing in the restaurant. By the time he comes out of hiding, Mary has gone back to her village, leaving Peter behind.
The rest of the novel details Hok’s journey to return the child to Mary before his ship sails for China. Enlisting the assistance of a “mix-breed” Chinese-native man named Sam Bing Lew as a guide, Hok encounters misfortune, adventure, a few old mining comrades, and near disaster along the way. This narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to Hok’s time as a coolie, complete with graphic portrayals of injuries and deaths suffered by Chinese and “redbeard” (white) workers, abhorrent living conditions, and constant threat of violence.

Vancouver-raised Yee obviously knows his subject matter well, and does a good job immersing the reader in the sights, smells, and sounds of his settings, from the rough and tumble “bachelor” lifestyle in Chinatown to the majesty of the West Coast wilderness and mountains. At times, however, Yee provides too little context, leaving the reader to piece together the historical fact framing Hok’s fictional tale. While more is known about the role of these Chinese workers than ever before, a reader coming to this novel with little foreknowledge will likely come away with an incomplete understanding.

Still, Yee’s tale is as much a story of self-discovery as a portrait of a time and place. In his quest to unburden himself of Peter, Hok is revealed to be in a constant state of conflict. Though he is rude, boastful, self-serving, and prone to self-pity, in rare moments he also shows vulnerability and the capacity to be the “superior” man he aims to be: honourable, strong, smart, successful, and caring.

His jealousy at Peter’s obvious preference for Sam is fuelled in equal measure by hurt pride and a genuine desire for the child’s affection. He thinks himself better than Sam because of the latter’s mixed heritage, but ends up admiring him. “Not only had Sam helped me across the river in that leaky canoe, but he had also saved me from the trestle, the bandits and the thugs on the train. He was entitled to receive prime favours from me and my family,” says Hok after the two have split up. “But this parting means that those debts would never be repaid. I had slipped like a determined eel from his hands, and we would never see each other again.”

Other than the spotty exposition, the narrative’s only real negative is the choppy cadence. In the prefatory author’s note, Yee says he aimed to mimic the literal translation of a memoir, the result being a blend of sometimes stilted dialogue, frequent Chinese proverbs, and odd (to Western ears, at least) exclamations or turns of phrase. If readers can adjust to these idiosyncrasies, they will be rewarded by the longer passages in which Hok is more philosophical and reveals that, while he may never fit the traditional definition of a superior man, he is complex, honest, and worth reading about.