This is historical fiction at its best. JIndan lives in a village while her father works for the maharaja in Lahore. Her brother, Jawahar and Jindan steal produce from farms and their mother sews because her father doesn’t give the family enough money. As Jindan grows, she becomes more beautiful and her father sees her potential for marrying into a rich family. He takes her to Lahore after she pleads with him to take Jawahar too where her life is about to change forever.
Hana is a teenager determined to escape her hand to mouth existence while living with her often absent mother in a small apartment in a Tokyo suburb. When not at school, she works in a local restaurant saving her earnings. But when one of her mother’s boyfriends steals her savings, she is devastated until she runs into her mother’s friend Kimiko whom she remembers from earlier, who befriended her. Hana moves to another part of Tokyo where Kimiko opens a bar. Although underage, Hana works hard and drinks hard to make a successful life with Kimiko. Hana befriends clients while working, pays the bills and saves the profits. Life is looking up with Kimiko and her living in a small apartment, but everything is about to change.
In the 1850s, Orchid is a concubine to the Emperor Tzu Hsi, but when he dies she is thrust into the position of empress because she is the only concubine/wife to birth a son. She learns to govern with the help of her trusted friend, Yung Lu until her son, Tung Chih, is old enough to become emperor. China has gone through difficult times, it’s lost the first opium war and European and Japanese powers demand China cede control of ports and claim its wealth for themselves.
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