Book
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See
Book 1 in the Shanghai Girls series.
Buy the book from:
Shanghai, 1937. Sisters Pearl and May support their fashionable life as calendar models until their father reveals that gambling debts have destroyed the family’s fortune. He arranges marriages to two Chinese American brothers, but the Japanese attack on Shanghai intervenes before the sisters can leave safely. Their escape south through occupied territory exposes them to violence, bereavement and a secret that will determine the shape of their family.
After reaching Hong Kong, Pearl and May travel to the United States, endure detention and questioning at Angel Island, and join their husbands’ household in Los Angeles Chinatown. Over the next twenty years they negotiate racist law, wartime suspicion, anti-Communist investigation and competing ideas of duty. The sisters’ loyalty survives through sacrifice and concealment, but the truth surrounding Joy’s birth turns their bond into a source of rivalry as well as protection.
More by the author
