Waiting on Wednesday: A Hundred Flowers by Gail Tsukiyama

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating! Want to participate? Post your own WOW entry on your blog, and leave your link at Breaking the Spine.

A Hundred Flowers by Gail Tsukiyama

288 pages
Expected publication: August 7th 2012 by MPS
ISBN 1429961694 (ISBN13: 9781429961691)

Ever since I read Women of the Silk and the sequel, Language of Threads, I've been a huge fan of Tsukiyama's books. The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is one of my all time favorites. It's been a long wait for this new one but I'm sure it will be worth it.

*Sigh* Is it August yet?

From the publisher:

A powerful new novel about an ordinary family facing extraordinary times at the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution China, 1957. Chairman Mao has declared a new openness in society: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.” Many intellectuals fear it is only a trick, and Kai Y ing’s husband, Sheng, a teacher, has promised not to jeopardize their safety or that of their young son, T ao. But one July morning, just before his sixth birthday, Tao watches helplessly as Sheng is dragged away for writing a letter criticizing the Communist Party and sent to a labor camp for “reeducation.”

A year later, still missing his father desperately, Tao climbs to the top of the hundred-year-old kapok tree in front of their home, wanting to see the mountain peaks in the distance. But Tao slips and tumbles thirty feet to the courtyard below, badly breaking his leg. As Kai Ying struggles to hold her small family together in the face of this shattering reminder of her husband’s absence, other members of the household must face their own guilty secrets and strive to find peace in a world where the old sense of order is falling. Once again, Tsukiyama brings us a powerfully moving story of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with grace and courage.