Description
Book SynopsisRainsford is a fourth-generation Chinese American named after the town where his great grandfather worked during the gold rush. Orphaned at fifteen, he attempts to claim America as his homebase, and his personal history is interwoven with dreams, stories, and letters of his family's life in America.
Trade Review"A new edition with an excellent new introduction by Wong."
* Oregonian *
"Evocative, sensuous."
* San Francisco Chronicle *
"Speaks out so eloquently. . . . Moves through the dreams and visions and the bitter reality of his forebears' lives."
-- Kay Boyle * Rolling Stone *
"Although the book abounds in fascinating historical detail, it is most remarkable for the beauty of its prose, its dream passages, and its sophisticated, unpretentious shifts in narrative perspective from first to third person and from one narrator to another."
* Seattle Times *
"Shawn Wong's finely woven story is a poetic evocation of a great-grandfather's life as a newly arrived laborer in 1850s Northern California."
* Essence *
"A poetically rendered tour de force."
* Ameriasia Journal *
"This is the sort of novel that sticks with you for years and years."
* Seattle Met *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
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