The National League of American Pen Women 2001 Soul-Making Literary Prize Winner, Honorable Mention for the work "Trigrams" Sisterly rivalries, jealousy, envy, love, and the competition for parental approval are crosscurrents that operate below the surface among four talented teen-aged sisters of the Lee family, wealthy Koreans living in 1940's Shanghai. Their family's dynamics become subsumed and greatly complicated when the communists take over China in 1949, and the Lees are forced to abandon their home. They flee to Korea, a land they have never seen. Within months the Korean War breaks out and they are swept into its maelstrom. Three days later their home is overrun. They endure forced labor at the hands of a hostile North Korean army, with the threat of violent death at any time. Again they must flee, abandoning their new home and every possession. There is no choice but to accept their loss and join the hoards of homeless refugees moving south, away from the battleground. Ultimately, they have to separate in the dead of winter to find refuge at the mercy of not always welcoming distant relatives whom they have never met. Ai-li Lee, seventeen when the book opens, is the narrator. In a simple girl's voice she relates how she, her parents and siblings struggle to survive and keep the family intact. To prevail, they faced bitter passions within and beyond their family of violent rape, betrayal, infidelity, revenge, political intrigue and murder. Desperate for guidance during their crises, Ai-li and her closest brother, Eddie, turn to the I Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle their revered grandfather had relied on in Shanghai. They hope the secrets of its trigrams will reveal their wisdom to them, too.
In the final years of the 19th century violence and turmoil led to the collapse of Chinas Qing Dynasty. Valeda Duval, a beautiful and independent French colonialist, and Kyung-su. Lee, a Korean minister stationed in Peking, fall in love after he saves her life during the bloody Boxer Rebellion. Breaking racial and societal taboos on both sides they remain together and have a son. Throughout Asia, European and Japanese imperialism reaches its height. Japan occupies Korea, brutally snuffing out its independence while advancing into Manchuria as its first step in conquering all of China. Minister Lee, suddenly a man without a country, must go into exile. In the Dragons Wake is the story of how he transforms himself from a traditional aristocrat, a Confucian-trained royalist and servant of his king, into a radical leader of the anti-Japanese resistance and secret arms buyer for the liberation movement. All the while Lee raises his mixed-race son to be a patriot and future leader of the resistance. But conflict threatens his family: Valeda doesnt want her son to be a fighter. Around them the dynasty collapses. Sun Yat-sen tries to replace it with a republic, but the northern warlords want a new empire. Anarchy cripples China as the boy grows to manhood in the midst of this chaos and bloodshed. His story is told in book two.
Shadow of the Rising Sun, (book two of The Dragon?s Wake Trilogy) continues the Lee family?s story of struggle, obligation and destiny. The year is 1918, Japan has occupied and then annexed Korea, cruelly reducing it to a virtual slave colony,and has now begun its takeover of Manchuria on its way to conquering China. Michael Y.T. Lee, son of former Minister Lee, leader of Korea?s liberation movement, is seventeen when he is sent to Peking University to prepare himself to join his father in the anti-Japanese resistance. There he meets some of the future leaders of China and falls under the influence of the country?s intellectual giants, some who will found China?s communist party. While he yearns to fight for the freedom of Korea, his ancestral homeland, which he has never seen, he realizes he must first address problems closer to home. Warlords and gangsters have taken over much of China, creating anarchy and corruption throughout the land. China?s well-organized opium cartel controls Shanghai and all central and coastal China. Y.T. joins Sun Yat-sen?s nationalist army to take back the country and unite it under a nationalist government. He becomes a cavalry officer and fights against the warlords. After being wounded in battle he learns that Chiang Kaishek, Sun?s prot?g? and successor, has betrayed the government and sold it out to the opium cartel. Meanwhile, Japan?s invasion of China expands. Even Shanghai, Y.T.?s home, is taken over by them in their bloodthirsty pursuit of empire. Y.T. must make agonizing choices to save his family and his life goals as the communists, nationalists, and Japanese all battle for control of China.
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