A powerful, sweeping debut about a smuggled Chinese girl fighting to find her place in the 1880s American West Daiyu is the orphaned daughter of a once influential, now missing, family.
Alone and on the streets, she must rely on her wit and quick thinking to discover what happened to her family. But when Daiyu is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, she must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to reinvent herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been - including the ones she most wants to leave behind - in order to finally claim her own name and story.
Historical fiction, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Narrative theme: Displacement - exile - migration
Paperback
Jenny Tinghui Zhang
416 pages
H: 234mm W: 153mm Spine: 30mm
Weight: 502 grams