In a small mining town in eastern British Columbia, Lily and her sister Bea suffer racial slurs because of their Chinese heritage. At home, they listen to their mother’s constant moaning about how she hates Canada and nothing is as good as Brunei where she spent most of her earlier life. Just as the mine is closing down, their father discovers their mother’s clothes are gone and there’s no sign of her. The father is forced to bring up the children with the help of his sister and they move to Calgary.
In the 1960s when Annuii is two, she’s left with her grandmother in Hong Kong while her parents immigrate to Canada. She is loved and cherished by Grandmother Jong, but when she’s reunited with her parents in Vancouver two years later, her mother tells her she is worthless because she’s a girl. Her childhood is spent under a disgruntled and abusive mother and a weak father who’s addicted to gambling. Without receiving parental love as a child, Annuii begins a quest, searching for affection elsewhere. This leads to disillusionment, but can Annuii examine her bad choices and start again?
I haven’t posted a five out of five review in a while because I haven’t read anything lately, I consider that good, but also because I’ve been busy with research for an upcoming novel. I visited a London medical and a pharmaceutical museum where I took photos of medical equipment and pages of medicines used in earlier times. Between reading those notes as well as the history of the town where I’m setting part of the story, pleasure reading has slipped from my usual routine.
What first fascinated me about this book was its structure. Like the rings of a tree, the story begins on the outer ring in the future and heads to the centre—its heartwood—going back in time exploring a key member of the Greenwood clan to 1934. Then the story heads out across the rings to the opposite edge completing Greenwood lives until it ends with Jake in 2038.
Read and Write 
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