Lisa See
China Dolls
Random House
$27
Available June 2014
Lisa See once again has brought a certain time period in history to life. This time is San Francisco, 1938, there is a World’s Fair on Treasure Island and a war brewing overseas. Three young women meet and find themselves competing in auditions at an exclusive nightclub called the Forbidden City. Grace is an American-born Chinese. Helen is from a Chinese family with deep roots in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and Ruby is Japanese passing as Chinese. They form a pact to stick together alternately helping and sometimes hurting each other within the cutthroat world of entertainment and male attention. When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, the government starts rounding up innocent Japanese and send them to interment camps.
I was really interested in following the lives of these women and See continues to portray complicated relationships in a very interesting, yet harrowing, time in our country’s history.
~ Cathy
Eight Cousins 