Download Shanghai Girls: A Novel AudioBook Free
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great prosperity and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and materials comforts provided by their dad’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of these lives. Though both sisters wave off expert and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon indication, strong and persistent, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . before day their dad explains to them that he has gambled away their prosperity and that in order to settle his bad debts he must sell girls as wives to suitors who've traveled from California to find Chinese brides.
As Japanese bombs land on their loved city, Pearl and May lay out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and from the clutch of brutal troops, and over the Pacific to the shores of America. In LA they begin a brand new chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they may have married, brushing up against the seduction of Hollywood, and trying to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules.
At its heart, Shanghai Women is a tale of sisters: Pearl and May are inseparable best friends who share desires, dreams, and a profound interconnection, but like sisters just about everywhere they also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. They love each other, but each is aware exactly where to drive the blade to harmed the other the most. On the way they face horrendous sacrifices, make impossible choices, and confront a destructive, life-changing key, but through it all both heroines of this astounding new novel hold fast to who they are–Shanghai females.
From the Hardcover model.
