A powerful debut of race, gender, heritage and survival, set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century America
Daiyu is the orphaned daughter of a once influential, now missing, family. Alone and on the streets, she must rely on her wits to discover what happened to her family.
But when Daiyu is kidnapped and smuggled from China to America, she relinquishes the future she imagined.
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 of the Wild West, 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.
