num_pages: 309
description: Pearl and May are sisters living carefree lives in Shanghai the Paris of Asia. But when Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city they set out on the journey of a lifetime one that will take them through the Chinese countryside in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers and across the Pacific to the shores of America.In 1937 Shanghai is the Paris of Asia a city of great wealth and glamour the home of millionaires and beggars gangsters and gamblers patriots and revolutionaries artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their fathers prosperous rickshaw business twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister May are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition they couldnt be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign strong and stubborn while May is a true Sheep adorable and placid. Both are beautiful modern and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime one that will take them through the Chinese countryside in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter trying to find love with the strangers they have married brushing against the seduction of Hollywood and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination brave Communist witch hunts and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatowns old ways and rules.
language: English
title: Shanghai Girls
publisher: Random House