This was a lovely, lovely book. You'll find your heart breaking more often than not.
Inara Erickson, whose very successful father has been pushing her to accept a corporate position at Starbucks, unexpectedly inherits her maternal aunt's estate on Orcas Island, off the Washington coast. The island holds both great joy and sorrow for the Erikson family. It was here that they spent many happy summers, but also here that Inara's mother lost her life in a tragic auto accident. Inara decides to spend some time in her aunt's house, now hers, and eventually decides to develop the estate into a boutique hotel. Her father agrees reluctantly to finance her venture. When she finds a piece of elaborately and expertly embroidered silk under a stair tread Inara is intrigued and intent on discovering its origins.
The reader also becomes enmeshed with the story of Mei Lein, a young woman whose Chinese family is expelled from Seattle in the 1880s under the Chinese Exclusion Act. The novel begins with Mei Lein's father pushing her off the rail of an ocean liner into Puget sound, and act that is ultimately revealed to be life-saving and motivated by love.
Little by little the author develops the connections between Mei Lien, the story embroidered on the piece of silk, and Inara's modern-day family. As she works with Chinese historian Daniel Chin, Inara also discovers a deep and, she believes, important relationship that may be shattered when the true story of the silk and Inara's ancestors is revealed.
This was a wonderful debut novel that is apropos in this era of anti-immigration. Aside from that, it will have your fascinated, incensed, and crying at the same time. Highly recommended!
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