New York Times bestselling author Jamie Ford brings his newest critically acclaimed novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, to Elk River Books on Thursday, Nov. 10, for a free reading and discussion.
The novel, a “powerful exploration of the love that binds one family across the generations,” charts the descendants of Afong Moy, a real person known as the first Chinese woman in America. The generations of Moys include a Seattle poet and her daughter, a World War II nurse, a student at a wildly progressive English school, a young girl facing a plague epidemic in San Francisco and a tech executive who’s created a career-making and -shattering dating app.
Running through all these lives is the same inherited trauma suffered by Afong, but also a love that cuts across the generations in seeking its fulfillment.
“The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is simply transcendent,” writes Kate Quinn, author of The Rose Code. “The first Chinese woman to set her lotus-bound feet in America is destined to set off a ripple through time and space, as her descendants struggle with her legacy of loss and loneliness. Themes of karma, courage, love, and motherhood weave timelessly through eight generations of women seeking to find balance in an increasingly tempest-racked world. Jamie Ford has outdone himself!”
Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Hoiping, China to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name Ford, thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 35 languages. Having grown up in Seattle, he now lives in Montana with his wife and a one-eyed pug.
Elk River Books is located at 122 S. 2nd St. in downtown Livingston. The free event begins at 7 p.m., and a book signing and reception will follow.
