Ah Ling: son of a prostitute & a white `ghost`, dispatched from Hong Kong as a boy to make his way alone in 1860s California. Anna May Wong: the first Chinese film star in Hollywood, forbidden to kiss a white man on screen. Vincent Chin: killed by a pair of Detroit auto workers in 1982 simply for looking Japanese. John Ling Smith: a half-Chinese writer visiting China for the first time, to adopt a baby girl. Inspired by three figures who lived at pivotal moments in Chinese-American history, & drawing on his own mixed-race experience, Peter Ho Davies plunges us into what it is like to feel, & be treated, like a foreigner in the country you call home. Ranging from the mouth of the Pearl River to the land of golden opportunity, this remarkable novel spans 150 years to tell a tale of familial bonds denied & fragmented, of tenacity & pride, of prejudice & the universal need to belong.