When Bibi Chen, the leader of a group of twelve American tourists, mysteriously dies while on an art expedition in the Himalayan foothills of China, the remainder of the group discover that the Burma Road is filled with danger and uncertainty.
Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years, but now that she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything.
The personal, often painful, histories of four Chinese American women who began meeting in San Francisco in 1949 to play mah jong are revealed as the daughter of one who has died searches for her sisters in China to tell them about the mother they never knew.
San Francisco ghostwriter Ruth Young finally begins to understand her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother LuLing's preoccupation with ghosts and curses when she reads Luling's writings of her dark backwoods childhood in 1920s China--where LuLing's mute, disfigured nursemaid committed suicide, and a nearby cave held what may have been the bones of the lost ancient hominid Peking Man.
The personal, often painful, histories of four Chinese American women who began meeting in San Francisco in 1949 to play mah jong are revealed as the daughter of one who has died searches for her sisters in China to tell them about the mother they never knew.
San Francisco ghostwriter Ruth Young finally begins to understand her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother LuLing's preoccupation with ghosts and curses when she reads Luling's writings of her dark backwoods childhood in 1920s China--where LuLing's mute, disfigured nursemaid committed suicide, and a nearby cave held what may have been the bones of the lost ancient hominid Peking Man.
Ming Miao tells her kittens about the antics of one of their ancestors, Sagwa of China, that produced the unusual markings they have had for thousands of years.
