An Instant USA Today Bestseller a Good Morning America Buzz Pick and a People Book of the
Week!Throw open the doors of your heart for the lionhearted girls of Chung’s gripping
debut…they are heroines for the ages.—PeopleA propulsive extraordinary novel about a mother
and her daughters’ harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China
by debut author Eve J. Chung based on her family storyDaughters are the Ang family’s curse.In
1948 civil war ravages the Chinese countryside but in rural Shandong the wealthy landowning
Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends
her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di who is just a year younger learns to hide
in plain sight and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own
small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town the rest
of the prosperous household flees leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view
them as useless mouths to feed.Without an Ang male to punish the land-seizing cadres choose
Hai as the eldest child to stand trial for her family’s crimes. She barely survives their
brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come the women plan their escape. Starving and
penniless but resourceful they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to
confront the family that abandoned them.From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao
and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan they witness the changing tide of a
nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of
their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate to
shake free of the bonds of their gender and to claim their own story.Told in assured
evocative prose with impeccably drawn characters Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful powerful
story about the resilience of women in war the enduring love between mothers daughters and
sisters and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations.
