God of Luck - Hardcover

McCunn, Ruthanne Lum

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569474664 ISBN 13: 9781569474662

Publisher: Soho Press, 2007

Synopsis

"With God of Luck, Ruthanne Lum McCunn has turned her descriptive and sensitive storytelling skills to the little-known coolie trade to Peru. She beautifully combines the hardships and brutality of the kidnapping of a Chinese man, conditions on the slave ships, and the bitterness of back-breaking labor in a foreign land with the sadness and determination of the wife and family back home. Never separating history from its impact on individual people, McCunn has reached into her characters' hearts to bring readers a story of emotional depth and truth."-Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

"Once again Ruthanne Lum McCunn opens a window onto another little-known chapter in the history of Chinese experience in the Americas. With amazing detail and riveting power, Ah Lung's story will keep readers spellbound and cheering to the final page."-Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of Farewell to Manzanar

Ah Lung and his beloved wife, Bo See, are separated by a cruel fate when, like thousands of other Chinese men in the nineteenth century, he is kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped to the deadly guano mines off the coast of Peru. Using their wits and praying to the God of Luck, they never lose hope of someday being reunited.

Ruthanne Lum McCunn is of Scottish and Chinese ancestry. She is the author of the classic Thousand Pieces of Gold, which has sold over two hundred thousand copies, as well as the novels The Moon Pearl and Wooden Fish Songs. She lives in San Francisco.

About this title

About the Author

Ruthanne Lum McCunn, of Scottish and Chinese ancestry, is the author of the classic Thousand Pieces of Gold (Design Enterprises, 1981, reissued by Beacon, 2004; over 200,000 copies sold); as well as the novels The Moon Pearl (Beacon 2000) and Wooden Fish Songs (Dutton 1995). She lives in San Francisco.

From Publishers Weekly

Ah Lung, the youngest son in a family of silk producers, is kidnapped and forced into slavery in McCunn's underpowered latest. Though Ah Lung signs a labor contract that promises generous wages and a limited term of employment, once he begins the journey to Peru from his native southern China, he discovers the wages are nonexistent and his chances of surviving the contract are only slightly better than those of surviving the voyage to Peru. While he endures being shackled in an overcrowded ship's hold, a failed mutiny, a shipboard fire and a cholera outbreak before being unloaded and forced to do backbreaking work in a guano mine, his family, especially his wife, Bo See, and sister Moongirl, search for him. Bo See decides to grow an additional crop of silkworms to finance her husband's rescue, and Ah Lung perseveres in the harshest of conditions. McCunn has done an enormous amount of research into both Chinese slavery and silk production, and though the information is fascinating, it tends to overwhelm her narrative and undermine its tension. The book has an epic sweep, but the reading experience is only partially satisfying. (Sept.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Soho Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1569474664
• ISBN 13: 9781569474662
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256