Four Treasures of the Sky: The compelling debut about identity and belonging in the 1880s American West

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Like the very many starts to Daiyu’s story— the author subtly begins a lot of sections with the phrase, “This is the story of…” —through the course of this journey, another blank page is drawn to start over when she escapes to Idaho. Her troubles begin with her name; Daiyu’s eponym is Lin Daiyu, a tragic figure of legend who dies spitting blood after the family of her beloved tricks him into marrying someone else.

The aspects of racial violence will have your stomach in knots, Zhang truly delivers a sense of dread and discomfort as she examines how even with best attempts at assimilation, whiteness will play gatekeeper to the point of violence at every opportunity.In the time it takes for me to approach, grab the fish farthest from her, and sprint away, the woman would barely be able to rise to her feet. Her personal struggles are shadowed by sexual violence and the ongoing threat of sexual assault for much of the book, as well as the specter of the Chinese exclusion act and increasing anti-Chinese sentiment and violence. Daiyu's story-telling, the characters she meets along the way, and fighting for survival in every moment are just gripping. This book is haunting, luscious and precise - it's historical fiction as we most want and need it to be.

It's the story of a Chinese girl who gets stolen from China and trafficked into the US to work at a brothel, it's a story of five Chinese men who get framed for the murder of a white man, and it's the untold story of so many Chinese people who lived in the US during and around the Chinese partition act (I highly recommend listening to the audiobook if you can, it has an interview with the author at the end that explains a lot of her influences). Extraordinary…Those who want to learn about a little-known incident in Chinese-American history will be enlightened by this moving debut.The novel follows Daiyu, whos difficult life in China becomes an even more difficult life in America when she is kidnapped off the streets and forced to immigrate into the sex trade. Her fate also brings out her strength and her savvy intuition as she comes of age under horrific circumstances from China to San Francisco to Pierce, Idaho.

That being said I think this is going to be a hit with those that don't mind young adult material and also prefer a more gentle, full of emotions story. I cannot get over how brilliant the prose is throughout, and just how vivid the story comes to life. This is only emboldened by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which propels the later portion of the novel towards its bloody and tense climax that resonates with an emotionally charged grimness that feels like the Coen brothers would want to film it.

Historical fiction at its most compelling and memorable…Generous, brutal, and heartbreaking…As a reader, you are in the hands of a gifted storyteller. I want to come away with an emotional connection to the characters who represent those who lived then and I always hope for beautiful writing that will take me to that time and place. Even deeper it illustrates that the past is destined to be repeated when left buried and hidden away.