April 2001 First Editions Club Pick

New York, NY: Penguin Putnam (2001)

First Edition. Signed.

Fine in dust jacket.

Ruth Young suspects that something is terribly wrong with her mother. As a child, Ruth was constantly subjected to her mother's disturbing notions about curses and ghosts and to her repeated threats to kill herself. But now LuLing Young seems happy -- far from her usual disagreeable and dissatisfied self. Ailing and struggling to hold onto the evaporating past. LuLing begins to write all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China. When Ruth discovers the papers, she is transported to a backwoods village known as Immortal Heart.

Like layers of sediment being removed, each page reveals secrets of the mute nursemaid. Precious Auntie, and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal. Within LuLing's pages, written in Chinese, awaits the truth about a mother's heart that she cannot tell her daughter, yet hopes she will never forget. Set in contemporary San Francisco and in the Chinese village where Peking Man is being unearthed, The Bonesetter's Daughter conjures the pain of broken dreams, the power of myths, and the strength of love that enables us to recover in memory what we have lost in grief.