Excerpt from China Dolls by Lisa See, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I have seven brothers, and my dad wished for an eighth son," I told them. "He hoped to get the sound ba— for eight, which sounds the same as good luck. He wanted to walk through Chinatown and have everyone recognize him for his successful business and his eight sons. Instead, I came along and ruined everything."

The waiter set down three bowls of steaming soup noodles. Ruby and I picked up our chopsticks and used them to bring the long noodles to our lips.

"Mama had eight children in ten years," I picked up after the waiter left. "She kept trying for an eighth son, but after me she only had miscarriages and stillborns. It's hard for girls like us. Boys can go to college, but Baba says, 'A woman without education is better than a woman with education.' " Neither of them seemed to recognize the Confucian saying. "We also aren't allowed to drive. We shouldn't show our arms. We can't show our legs. We're supposed to learn to cook, clean, sew, embroider— "

"Then how can you dance now?" Grace asked, fingering her chopsticks. "Didn't you say you can't do anything in Chinatown without people finding out about it?"

"And what about your brother?" Ruby chimed in. "Won't he tell?"

I had to think about how to answer them. Today was my first foray into the world of lying. Tell the truth, but not too much of it. "If Baba finds out, I'll be in real hot water," I answered at last. "But Monroe won't tell on me, because he wants to change his life too. He's studying to be an engineer, but he's worried he's going to end up working as a janitor or a houseboy. Something like that happened to another of my older brothers. Jackson was the first in our family t

Excerpted from China Dolls by Lisa See. Copyright © 2014 by Lisa See. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.