The River Girl and the Cormorant
A woman dares to dream in a world frozen in time
by Liora Barash
The Book
In her remote riverside village, Li-Ming and her family make their living through cormorant fishing, relying on massive, majestic birds to catch fish in the deep rivers of Yangzhou. Tradition dictates when and where she should eat, whom to serve, and even what she is allowed to yearn for — until the birth of her daughter, Xi’an, changes the course of everything.
Determined to give her child the opportunities she herself was denied, Li-Ming persuades her husband Xin to fund their daughter’s education, even as it means his return to the night fishing he fears most. When tragedy claims Xin’s life on the river, Li-Ming refuses to let her daughter’s future die with him. In an act of extraordinary courage, she takes up her husband’s oars and his once-despised black cormorant, entering a brutal, traditionally male trade to keep her daughter in school.
Years later, Xi’an becomes a celebrated writer, and at a national award ceremony she dedicates her success — and a school built in her mother’s honor — to the sacrifice that made it possible. The River Girl and the Cormorant is a lyrical, multigenerational saga of maternal sacrifice, the transformative power of education, and the struggle to break free from rigid tradition, set against the vivid backdrop of rural Chinese village life.
Why This Book Matters
The River Girl and the Cormorant arrives at a moment when readers are hungry for intimate, character-driven stories set against richly researched cultural backdrops — the same appetite that made The Good Earth, Pachinko, and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan into enduring bestsellers. Few novels explore the specific, little-depicted tradition of cormorant fishing in rural China, and fewer still ground that world in the universal emotional stakes of a mother’s sacrifice for her child’s education.
Liora Barash’s four decades as a primary school principal and educator of special-needs children give the novel’s central theme — the transformative, at times costly, power of education — real emotional authority. This is not an outsider’s imagined version of rural China; it is informed by Barash’s own research trip to Yangzhou County and filtered through a lifetime spent inside the mechanics of how learning changes a life.
The novel’s structure, spanning from a fisherman’s daughter to a decorated author who returns to build a school in her mother’s honor, gives publishers a complete, satisfying arc with crossover appeal across historical fiction, women’s fiction, and literary fiction lists.
About the Book
Genre: Literary Fiction / Historical Fiction / Women’s Fiction
Manuscript | 36,000 Words
For readers of The Good Earth, Pachinko, and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, The River Girl and the Cormorant offers a lyrical, multigenerational saga of maternal sacrifice and the transformative power of education, set in rural China.
Author
Liora Barash — Educator | Debut Novelist
Liora Barash was inspired to write The River Girl and the Cormorant following a family trip to the distant Yangzhou County in rural China. A primary school principal and educator of special-needs children for over four decades, she picked up the pen to capture the powerful cultural experience that exposed her to life behind the outward beauty of the land.
Her background in education brings exceptional sensitivity and insight to the portrayal of learning, growth, and the transmission of knowledge between generations — themes that resonate throughout the novel. As someone who has spent a lifetime nurturing children’s potential and breaking through barriers for students with special needs, Barash brings authentic emotional depth to Li-Ming’s fierce determination to secure an education for her daughter despite overwhelming odds.
The River Girl and the Cormorant is her debut novel, drawing directly on her own research trip to rural Yangzhou and her professional understanding of how education transforms lives.
Rights Status
Translation Rights Available: World excluding Russia
Film Rights: Available
Audio Rights: Available
Comparable Titles
This book is suitable for readers who enjoyed:
- The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
BISAC / Thema Categories
- FIC019000 – FICTION / Literary
- FIC014000 – FICTION / Historical / General
- FIC044000 – FICTION / Women
- FIC008000 – FICTION / Sagas
Themes
- Maternal Sacrifice
- The Transformative Power of Education
- Tradition vs. Individual Dreams
- Rural Chinese Village Life
- Cormorant Fishing Tradition
- Mother-Daughter Bonds
- Resilience and Survival
- Generational Legacy
Keywords
For readers interested in:
- literary fiction
- historical saga
- Chinese culture and tradition
- mother-daughter relationships
- cormorant fishing
- rural China
- women’s fiction
- multigenerational family saga
- education and social mobility
FAQ
Is this book based on a true story?
The novel is a work of fiction inspired by Liora Barash’s research trip to Yangzhou County, rural China, and the region’s traditional cormorant fishing practices; the characters and events are invented.
What is the word count and current status?
36,000 words, complete manuscript.
Does the reader need any background in Chinese history or culture to enjoy this novel?
No. The novel is written to be fully accessible to international readers, with cultural and historical context woven naturally into the narrative.
Is this book part of a series?
No, The River Girl and the Cormorant is a standalone novel.
What makes this novel different from other multigenerational sagas?
Its specific, rarely depicted setting — traditional cormorant fishing in rural China — combined with the author’s own professional background in education, which brings unusual authority and emotional precision to the novel’s central theme of learning as a path to freedom.
Is this suitable for adaptation to film or television?
The novel’s visual, atmospheric setting and complete generational arc — from a mother’s sacrifice to her daughter’s public tribute — offer strong potential for adaptation, particularly for international and prestige drama audiences.
Rights Agent's Notes
From a rights agent’s perspective, The River Girl and the Cormorant sits comfortably alongside three of the strongest-performing comp titles in the multigenerational Asian family saga space — The Good Earth, Pachinko, and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan — while offering a genuinely under-explored setting: the tradition of cormorant fishing in rural China, rendered with the kind of first-hand cultural detail that comes from an author’s own research trip rather than secondhand research.
Liora Barash’s four-decade career as an educator, including work with special-needs children, gives unusual authority to the novel’s central theme: the cost and transformative power of a mother’s fight for her child’s education. This is a debut novel, and at roughly 36,000 words it reads closer to a long novella than a traditional full-length saga — worth flagging early to publishers who may want to discuss expansion, or who specialize in shorter literary fiction formats.
No rights have been placed to date, and translation, film, and audio rights are all open. We see strong fit with literary and women’s fiction imprints internationally, particularly those with an existing appetite for Asian-set multigenerational sagas, as well as potential for prestige international drama adaptation given the novel’s vivid, cinematic arc.