WOW! I could not put this book down. I read Lisa See's Shanghai Girls a couple of years ago, and this novel starts where that one left off - when 19-year-old Joy learns that Pearl is not her birth mother, but Auntie May is, and that May gave her to her sister to raise after they fled China twenty years before.
It's now 1957, and Joy is an idealistic college student who thinks socialism sounds just great, and that Chairman Mao is a wonderful guy. So she leaves her family in Los Angele's Chinatown and runs off to Shanghai, in search of her birth father and a "better" life. When Pearl learns where she's gone, she heads to China after her, in hopes of bringing her home before it's too late. Soon both Joy and Pearl are caught up in Mao's Great Leap Forward, and not in a good way.
This isn't a pretty story, and See doesn't shy from the nastier details of life in the PRC. But it is a beautifully told story, and both Joy and Pearl grow and learn through their experiences. It's a really great read.
Dreams of Joy
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