Dream of the Walled City - Tapa dura

Phoebe Eng author of "Warrior Lessons: An Asian American Woman's Journey Into Power"Exhilarating and powerful...Lisa Huang Fleischman has given us the story of smart, bold women at a pivotal point in China's history. Finally, we get to see through a woman's eyes the heart of the revolution.

Lisa Huang Fleischman's extraordinary saga -- inspired by her own grandmother's life as an early feminist, political activist, and friend of Mao Zedong -- is an enthralling story of hard-won personal independence, set against the vivid backdrop of a rapidly changing world. In 1900, in the last years of the decaying Ching dynasty, ten-year-old Jade Virtue, the sheltered daughter of a wealthy Mandarin, is plunged into poverty and hardship with the mysterious death of her father. Jade Virtue's remarkable life story unfolds amidst an ancient society falling apart under the onslaught of rebellion, violent change, and the mounting aggression of Japan and the West. Fleischman charts the whole of Jade's astonishing journey: her first marriage to a corrupt opium addict, who hides a terrible secret in his family's past; her awakening independence and ambivalent politics; her struggles with motherhood; her fascinating acquaintance with an idealistic, young Mao Zedong; and her intense, lifelong friendship with the fiery woman revolutionary warrior, Xiang Jin Yu. When Jade Virtue finally finds true, redemptive love with Guai, a government official and sworn enemy of the Communists, her divided loyalties are put to their most extreme test. Told in gorgeous, exquisitely nuanced prose yet marked by a driving power, Dream of the Walled City is one woman's remarkable journey toward liberation.