Excerpt from The Printmaker's Daughter by Katherine Govier, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

This is the beginning. The tiny tenement house. The mat on which we all lay, side by side; the soot-orange sun at dawn.

My birth was both lucky and unlucky. Lucky because I was born in the center of this magic. First my father's words defined me, and then his pictures did. And unlucky to be under the thumb of another, weightier, power. And a daughter. In that terrible time. Lucky and unlucky.

That is Ei's story.

Excerpted from The Printmaker's Daughter by Katherine Govier. Copyright © 2011 by Katherine Govier. Excerpted by permission of Harper Perennial. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.