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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2022, 368 pages
Paperback:
Jun 20, 2023, 368 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers
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Our First Impressions readers found Zhuqing Li's nonfiction account of her aunts' lives during and after the Chinese Civil War moving and enlightening. Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden received an exceptional average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.
What it's about:
The author's aunts, Jun and Hong Chen, were two years apart in age, living as privileged and educated women in Nationalist China due to their father's position in the government. The family lived in a spectacular house with gardens, maids and all the trappings of wealth and power in China in the 1930s. All that changed when the Communists defeated the Nationalists in the Civil War. Through sheer accident, the sisters were separated and would not see each other again until they were well into their 80s. Jun ended up in Taiwan married to a general in the Nationalist army and became an entrepreneur. Hong lived her ...
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