Four Treasures of the Sky: The compelling debut about identity and belonging in the 1880s American West

Product Information

Content warnings: rape, human trafficking, forced prostitution, sexual assault, physical assault, kidnapping, hanging, murder, gunshots, racism, hate crimes. That being said I think this is going to be a hit with those that don't mind young adult material and also prefer a more gentle, full of emotions story. At her shuffling, loose fish slide down from the top of the heap to the tarp’s edge, where they remain vulnerable and unattended.

Historical fiction at its most compelling and memorable…Generous, brutal, and heartbreaking…As a reader, you are in the hands of a gifted storyteller. To guide her along the way, Daiyu is often visited by the spirit of her namesake, Lin Daiyu( 林黛玉), who comes from Dream of the Red Chamber, an 18th century manuscript by Cao Xueqin considered one of the four Classic Chinese novels. There is a lot of telling at the expense of showing, particularly when it is making a point it wants you to know is about something bad (it does not tip into trauma porn though, but readers seeking content warnings should be advised violence and sexual assault are frequent) and many aspects felt overworked.It's the story of a Chinese girl who gets stolen from China and trafficked into the US to work at a brothel, it's a story of five Chinese men who get framed for the murder of a white man, and it's the untold story of so many Chinese people who lived in the US during and around the Chinese partition act (I highly recommend listening to the audiobook if you can, it has an interview with the author at the end that explains a lot of her influences). But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined. In the 1880s, protagonist Daiyu, a thirteen-year-old Chinese girl, is kidnapped and taken to San Francisco.

The episodes of brutality Daiyu witnessed and experienced in the course of her jouney are difficult to read. Lin Daiyu is a girl named after a tragic romance heroine in perhaps a significant foreshadowing of Daiyu’s own fate. It’s one your emotions will force you to hold on to as Zhang’s poetic prose unravels a story of reclamation—even though there’s no justice, no closure, no happiness at the end. I felt different pieces of my being sliding into place, as if I had just unlocked an extraordinary secret about myself.My favorite aspects of the novel are Zhang’s incredible phrasing and poetic languages and the musings on art and creation. She finds work and makes friends and allies, but she must also deal with growing discrimination and racism against Chinese immigrants that resulted in many instances of violence and death. Daiyu is sure to take her place in the canon of great Western heroines next to True Grit's Mattie Ross.