Monday, April 12th at 7:00 pm
LISA SEE
author of
Shanghai Girls

The latest book by bestselling novelist Lisa See describes the glamour of Shanghai in the 1930s, and tells the story of two sisters whose unexpected journey takes them from “the Paris of Asia” to Chinatown in Los Angeles. Shanghai Girls is now being published in paperback.

When a crime lord visits their father to collect an unpaid debt, sisters Pearl and May are forced into arranged marriages with wealthy American businessmen, and eventually taken from their homes to the far away land of Los Angeles – just as the Japanese are bombing Shanghai, in one of the first portents of World War II. “See excels at drawing her readers into the rich history of China,” said the Miami Herald in a recent review, “and providing her narrators with voices so unique that readers truly know and care about these women within a few pages, if not paragraphs.”

Once in America, Pearl and May must adjust to their new husbands, new homes, and new country. They feel the ever present magnetism of Hollywood, and the sting of discrimination. Both the diverse historical settings and the complex sibling relationship make Shanghai Girls an engaging story.

According to Bookpage, See has crafted a “compelling family saga…” and the Denver Post calls Shanghai Girls “a rich work, one that portrays an immigrant experience as well as plumbing the relationship of sisterhood, with its friction as well as its support… The result is as compulsively readable as it is an enlightening journey.”

Lisa See is the internationally-bestselling author of seven works of fiction and non-fiction, including Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love. She lives in Los Angeles.