Shanghai 1937. Pearl & May are two sisters from a bourgeois family. Though their personalities are very different
- Pearl is a Dragon sign strong & stubborn while May is a true Sheep adorable & placid
- they are inseparable best friends. Both are beautiful modern & living a carefree life until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away the family's wealth & that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to two ' Gold Mountain' men: Americans. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city the two sisters set out on the journey of a lifetime one that will take them through the villages of southern China in & out of the clutches of brutal soldiers & even across the ocean through the humiliation of an anti-Chinese detention centre to a new married life in Los Angeles' Chinatown. Here they begin a fresh chapter despite the racial discrimination & anti-Communist paranoia because now they have something to strive for: a young American-born daughter Joy. Along the way there are terrible sacrifices impossible choices & one devastating life-changing secret but through it all the two heroines of this astounding new novel by Lisa See hold fast to who they are
- Shanghai girls.