The Kappa Child
Greatly praised at Readercon, and justly so, this story of a strange family of Japanese immigrants struggling to settle in the arid prairie of Western Canada in a Canadian American Gods, looking East where Gaiman looked to the mysteries of Old Europe. This is a more writerly book than Gaiman's, though I am not quite certain that it is a better one, It is, in any case, a very fine (and very strange) novel.