Description
In this profoundly moving novel, Fae Myenne Ng takes readers into the hidden heart of San Francisco's China town, to a world of family secrets, hidden shames, and the lost bones of a "paper father. It is a world in which two generations of the Leong family live in an uneasy tension as they try to fathom the source of middle daughter Ona's sorrow.
Oldest daughter Leila tells the story: of Mah, working as a seamstress in a garment shop run by a "Chinese Elvis"; of father Leon, a merchant seaman who ships out frequently; of Ona, who's ended her young, conflicted life by jumping from the roof of a Chinatown housing project; and of the youngest, Nina, who escaped to New York by working as a flight attendant, and now leads tours to China.
With Ona and Nina gone, it is up to Leila to lay the bones of the family's collective guilt to rest. Fae Myenne Ng's tough-minded wisdom about her characters and their world results in a novel as moving as it is unsentimental.
Her portraits of the everyday heroism of the Leongs who inflict deep hurt on each other in their struggles to survive, and yet sustain one another with loyalty and love give Bone the substance of a major piece of writing, even as her effortless-seeming prose draws the reader into the emotional heart of a sometimes sequestered community.
ISBN:9781562829445
