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A Novel
by Gail Tsukiyama
Readers of Women of the Silk never forgot the moving, powerful story of Pei, brought to work in the silk house as a girl, grown into a quiet but determined young woman whose life is subject to cruel twists of fate, including the loss of her closest friend, Lin.
Now, in bestselling novelist Gail Tsukiyama's The Language of Threads, we finally learn what happened to Pei, as she leaves the silk house for Hong Kong in the 1930s, arriving with a young orphan, Ji Shen, in her care.
Her first job, in the home of a wealthy family, ends in disgrace, but soon Pei and Ji Shen find a new life in the home of Mrs. Finch, a British ex-patriate who welcomes them as the daughters she never had. Their idyllic life is interrupted, however, by war, and the Japanese occupation. Pei is once again forced to make her own way, struggling to survive and to keep her extended family alive as well. In this story of hardship and survival, Tsukiyama paints a portrait of women fighting the forces of war and time to make a life for themselves.
"In spare, evocative prose, Tsukiyama paints contrasting pictures of the bustling wealth of Hong Kong and its massive poverty ... Women provide for each other in myriad ways in this world, and the relationships forged between them glow at the heart of Tsukiyama's story. Sisters are reunited, mothers and adopted daughters remain steadfastly loyal, childbirth breeds grief, but affirmation, too, and great friends even return from the dead to console their loved ones in this quiet but powerful effort from a writer who proves once again that she is an unusually gifted storyteller." ―Publishers Weekly
"A saga of a Chinese woman in the WWII era and sequel to Women of the Silk ... historically fascinating." ―Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Language of Threads was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father in San Francisco, Gail Tsukiyama now lives in El Cerrito, California. Her novels include Dreaming Water, The Language of Threads, The Samurai's Garden, and Night of Many Dreams.
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