In 1867, Lisa See’s great-great-grandfather arrived in America, where he prescribed herbal remedies to immigrant labourers who were treated little better than slaves. His son Fong See later built a mercantile empire and married a Caucasian woman, in spite of laws that prohibited unions between the races. And Lisa herself grew up playing in her family’s antiques store in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, listening to stories of missionaries and prostitutes, movie stars and all-Chinese baseball teams.

Out of the stories heard in her childhood in Los Angeles’s Chinatown and years of research, See has constructed this sweeping chronicle of her Chinese-American family, a work that takes in stories of racism and romance, entrepreneurial genius and domestic heartache, secret marriages and sibling rivalries, in a powerful history of two cultures meeting in a new world.