New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan
brings us her latest novel: a sweeping, evocative epic of two women's
intertwined fates and their search for identity--from the lavish parlors
of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese
village
Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the
American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when
the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in
a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan."
Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the
worlds of East and West--until she is able to merge her two halves,
empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business
of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who
she is.
Back in 1897 San Francisco, Violet's mother, Lucia, chooses a disastrous
course as a sixteen-year-old, when her infatuation with a Chinese
painter compels her to leave her home for Shanghai. Shocked by her
lover's adherence to Chinese traditions, she is unable to change him,
despite her unending American ingenuity.
Fueled by betrayals, both women refuse to submit to fate and societal
expectations, persisting in their quests to recover what was taken from
them: respect; a secure future; and, most poignantly, love from their
parents, lovers, and children. To reclaim their lives, they take
separate journeys--to a backwater hamlet in China, the wealthy environs
of the Hudson River Valley, and, ultimately, the unknown areas of their
hearts, where they discover what remains after their many failings to
love and be loved.
Spanning more than forty years and two continents, The Valley of
Amazement transports listeners from the collapse of China's last
imperial dynasty to the beginning of the Republic and recaptures the
lost world of old Shanghai through the inner workings of courtesan
houses and the lives of the foreigners living in the International
Settlement, both erased by World War II. A deeply evocative narrative of
the profound connections between mothers and daughters, imbued with
Tan's characteristic insight and humor, The Valley of Amazement
conjures a story of inherited trauma, desire and deception, and the
power and obstinacy of love.
