by Lisa See, 2009
Set in Shanghai and then Los Angeles from 1937 to 1957, two sisters, Pearl and May, grow up in Shanghai, loving life – rich, beautiful, “beautiful girls,” – painted on calendars. Then their Dad (Baba) gets in trouble with gang due to his gambling and he has to sell his daughters to be wives. Pearl and May try to escape the arranged marriages to Sam and Vern, sons of Old Man Louie, who lives in Los Angeles. Instead of having to Old Man Louie and his sons, they end up having to flee Shanghai with their mother in terror because of Japanese attacks. The mom and Pearl get raped by Japanese soldiers – the mom until death. Pearl almost died but May wheel barrows her to a hospital. The end up going to their husbands in Los Angeles, via San Francisco and Angel Island. The immigration officials interrogate them for months at Angel Island. Meanwhile May has a baby – she got pregnant while in Shanghai – but not by Vern, the 14 yr. old husband she was bought for, that she only spent one night with, and when that night was over, they checked the sheets for blood and there was none, so everyone knows they didn’t do the “husband-wife thing.” The sisters work out an elaborate plan that they will hide the fact that May is pregnant and wear peasant clothes (all this on Angel Island) and keep their stories incongruent – and pass off Pearl as the pregnant one (She and Sam did have sex their one night) and when the baby is born, they will develop matching stories so the immigrant officials will let them go to their new families in L.A. It works – May has her baby, a girl, in the showers in Angel Island – everyone thinks it’s Pearl’s baby. They name her Joy and Pearl and Sam are believed to be her parents. They move to L.A. and discover Old Man Louie and his sons are all fake- not wealthy, not real sons (paper sons) and nothing is as they thought. Also, there is a lot of prejudice against Chinese.
They do have businesses in China City that they help run and they scrape by and actually become a close-knit family over the years – they all live together in an apt. May becomes a beautiful extra in Hollywood movies. Sam and Pearl grow to love one another deeply – they are the only 2 who live honestly and tell all about their pasts. It brings them very close. Pearl gets pregnant and it’s a boy but he dies – still born. Vern, May’s husband, is actually the only true son of Old Man Louie and Yen-Yen. And Vern is mentally disabled and gets worse and worse eventually needing diapers and hands-on care.
The book ends strangely. Joy is all grown up and goes to Univ of Chicago-becomes interested in a boy named Joe – a commie – and comes home to LA for the summer full of ideas. Her Mom (Pearl) tells her to be careful but the family ends up with FBI agents hounding them and asking lots of questions – it was the 50’s when anti-communism was rampant. The FBI agents hound Sam so much he ends up hanging himself. Breaks Joy’s heart and Pearl’s. May admits to Pearl that she turned in Sam as a “paper son” in hopes they would admit it and get their citizenship. May and Pearl have a terrible argument where all their hurts pour out. Joy listens and discovers that May is her mother and Z.G., the painter in China who used to paint Pearl and May, and whom Pearl loved – is her father.
Joy runs away–they think to China to try to find him. Pearl is going to try to get to China to find Joy. May is going to stay in America, take care of Vern, and try to arrange things from there. The end. That’s it. We never know what happens.