"Soft Burial begins with a mysterious protagonist without a name-decades earlier she was pulled out of a river in a state of near-death. The narrative follows her journey through recovery as she takes a job as a housekeeper in the home of a powerful cadre, marries the doctor who saved her, and starts a family of her own. Gradually, as the story unfolds, the protective cocoon of amnesia that her subconscious meticulously wove around her begins to give way, revealing glimpses of her previous life. It is eventually revealed that both she and her husband's families were victims of the Land Reform Movement, a violent political movement during the early years of Mao's rule in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During its height, her entire family was killed and her first husband's family committed mass suicide, their bodies given "a soft burial," that is, haphazardly buried in the ground without coffins. Her second husband, Dr. Wu, came from a family in Shanxi that was also murdered during the Land Reform Movement. Living in the shadow of trauma, silence dominates their lives, until their son grows up and begins to investigate. A gripping story of the danger posed by a past that won't stay buried"--