Excerpt from Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Father opened the door, and Three and I entered the kitchen to find Mom sweeping up the broken bowls. Nai Nai sat red-faced at the table, simmering. "Six more years! All I asked you to do was wait six more years! Now there will be another useless mouth to feed!"

"You can't take the fortune-teller so seriously," Father said quietly. "It could be a boy."

Nai Nai was unmollified, but she couldn't stay mad at her son. Instead, she focused her ire on Mom, blaming her for being a temptress. "I told you not to fight fate, but you didn't listen," Nai Nai said angrily. "Your arrogance has invited misfortune, and your daughter will be a blight on our household!"

That evening, while Father ate the dinner that Mom had cooked, Mom had to kneel on the floor-Nai Nai's favorite punishment to mete out. I grew up watching my mother on her knees, sometimes for an entire evening, for minor transgressions, like spilling soup. Solemnly, I looked at her, but she would not meet my gaze. Small, shiny teardrops fell from her eyes like pearls, shattering as they hit the tile. I hope that when I grow up, I can have a son, I thought, seeing my own future in her helpless form.

Life was unfair, but Mom said that it could always be worse. "Be grateful," she told me. "At least you were born to a good family. You will likely marry a rich man and have a comfortable life." I dreaded marriage, but it was as unavoidable as death. If I was lucky, maybe I would pair with a man with a kind mother-or a dead one.

Excerpted from Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung. Copyright © 2024 by Eve J. Chung. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.