Helpful Score: 1
A really good book that tells about the love between a father and a daughter and the father and a city. And how that man refuses to put his wife and daughter before that city. The characters were so believsble. At times, the book brought tears to my eyes. Our book club just read it and everyone in the group gave the book a "thumbs up".
Helpful Score: 1
A compelling read. Could not put it down once I stared reading it.
great sympathetic characters. if you love historical fiction, read this book! read for my book club; 95% of the members loved it!
Beautiful book. Fictional narrative embedded with historical accounts. Great read.
This book shows a great love for the city of Shanghai. It also shows though a great nostalgia for the old Los Angeles orange groves. The father daughter relationship is a great story here. This book is adapted somewhat from a true life story. Our book club loved it too.
Like the other reviewers, this book kept my interest and attention to the end. I, also, read it until it was finished, in one sitting. The author writes in a way that pulls you in and makes you feel that you are seeing it all. Loved it.
Wonderful insight into China.
This is a first novel. According to the back cover, the narrator grows up in Shanghai in the 30s and 40s and has a special bond with her father, who is a smuggler and millionaire. (His parents, however, were missionaries.) The family flees to Los Angeles in the face of the Japanese occupation, but the father remains in Shanghai, "believing his connections and luck will keep him safe. He's wrong." He does survive, but still choses Shanghai over his family during WWII. The daughter connects with him again, late in his life, but she can't really understand him until she reads his journals.
Great book. Full of history that kept u riveted. Great characters. Just loved this book.
I think this is one of the best books I have read in a while. It not only tells the reader about the city of Shanghai during different eras, it describes a every interesting relationaship between father and daughter.
Anna, the narrator, is living in exotic prewar Shanghai, with her young parents, wealth, and comfort. Her father is a secretive and charming man, whose joys are sharing his beloved city with his only daughter.
When Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to Los Angeles, he stays behind, thinking his connections and luck will keep him safe.
As Anna writes a most interesting story of her memories and her father's journals, we learn of his fall from a millionaire to the torture of being a prisoner. As the book unfolds it reveals an enduring family love through tragic circumstances.
The reading of this book is easy, a page-by-page turner from the beginning. The story is of betrayal and reconciliation spanning several years across two continents.
When Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to Los Angeles, he stays behind, thinking his connections and luck will keep him safe.
As Anna writes a most interesting story of her memories and her father's journals, we learn of his fall from a millionaire to the torture of being a prisoner. As the book unfolds it reveals an enduring family love through tragic circumstances.
The reading of this book is easy, a page-by-page turner from the beginning. The story is of betrayal and reconciliation spanning several years across two continents.
This is a uncorrected proof paperback
