From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, "one of those
special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot" (The New
York Times Book Review), a moving novel about tradition, tea farming,
and the bonds between mothers and daughters.
In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their
lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people,
ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for
generations--until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the
first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen.
The stranger's arrival marks the first entrance of the modern world in
the lives of the Akha people. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated
girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her
early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock--conceived with a man her
parents consider a poor choice--she rejects the tradition that would
compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her,
wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an
orphanage in a nearby city.
As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her insular village for an
education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in
California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood,
Haley wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her
lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in
the study of Pu'er, the tea that has shaped their family's destiny for
centuries.
A powerful story about circumstances, culture, and distance, The Tea
Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little
known region and its people and celebrates the bond of family.
