Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung

There is so much history in the world that we often aren't familiar with unless it is the history of our own country or of our own family, the former taught in schools and the latter passed down through the generations, often incomplete. I did learn a bit about the Chinese Civil War between Communist Mao Zedong and Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek in school but certainly didn't learn it in depth, especially the atrocities that accompanied this brutal war. Author Eve J. Chung was also unaware of the whole of this history and of the extent of the suffering that her own grandmother faced during this period in her life. Daughters of Shandong is Chung's attempt at giving a fictionalized voice to the grandmother who survived so much and never shared the full extent of the trauma that marked her life.

Hai Ang is a child, the oldest daughter of the Ang heir. That she is a daughter makes her less than in the eyes of the family, especially her cruel grandmother. She tries hard to be a dutiful daughter, even as she watches her mother be cruelly abused and denigrated for not producing a male heir for the next generation, birthing only daughter after daughter. Although her family is wealthy and land-owning, Hai, her younger sisters, and their mother are treated poorly, akin to the peasants who work the Ang land. Hai suffers throughout much of the story, first as a "worthless" daughter in a family that only valued sons, then at the hands of the Communists intent on punishing this young girl for the landowner sins of her father and grandfather since the men had disappeared and couldn't be tried in person, and finally as a refugee fleeing almost certain death and enduring extreme hardship with her mother and sisters as they sought to find and be reunited in Taiwan with the family who left them behind without a second thought. The trials and tribulations that these women endure over the years are almost unbelievable; they move from harrowing experience to harrowing experience with only small tokens of hope or kindness between them. Hai is a fully sympathetic character, her mother is part downtrodden and submissive and part strength. Younger sister Di is the least likeable of the women (aside from the truly evil grandmother), retaining her selfishness despite the unceasing love and care she receives from Hai and their mother.

The story of the women's experiences and journey is a compelling one, at least until they are reunited with the family that discarded them. It is at this point that the narrative timeline compresses and wraps up each of the women's fates quickly and incompletely. I'd speculate that this is where the fictional Hai's story converges with what Chung knows for certain about her grandmother's story. It certainly feels like she had full creative control over the first three quarters of the novel but felt constrained to stay within the bounds of reality for the last quarter, making it impossible to fully flesh out a satisfying ending. Despite this shortcoming, this is an interesting tale of survival and the resilience of women and one that the majority of my book club thoroughly enjoyed.