A Girl Named Petrel, a novel by Yao Emei, illuminates the lives of contemporary China's "small-town swots" - a group seldom portrayed in literature. In China, there are countless girls named "Petrel" (Haiyan), none of whom realize that their wings, meant to soar freely across the skies, have any purpose beyond the socially, historically, and familially imposed goal of "having to cross the ocean." The novel experimentally explores what possibilities might emerge when the lives of these "small-town swots" derail from their predetermined tracks.