"How can one story unfold the same way under so many different circumstances?"
Four interlinked stories examine the Chinese-American experience from the 19th century to the present. "Gold" follows a mixed-race immigrant from the Pearl River Delta who becomes the valet of a railroad baron. "Silver" introduces 1930s Hollywood actress Anna May Wong, whose career ambitions are thwarted by institutional racism. "Jade," set against the backdrop of 1980s Detroit's struggling auto industry, recounts a hate crime, while the contemporary "Pearl" describes a biracial writer's adoption of a child from China. Like The Welsh Girl, author Peter Ho Davies' debut novel, The Fortunes sensitively explores issues of identity and belonging.
Involuntarily committed to Yorkshire's Sharston Asylum in 1911, factory girl Ella Fay endures a grueling regimen of solitary confinement and hard labor. Her only respite is a weekly dance held for the inmates in the institution's ballroom; here she meets John Mulligan, an Irishman suffering from "melancholia" since the death of his wife and child. A clandestine correspondence fuels their forbidden passion, while resident physician Charles Fuller's obsession with eugenics threatens their safety. Fans of Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, also set in a mental hospital, should appreciate this moving story of love and loss.
Imprisoned on the British-controlled island of Saint Helena in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte endures his banishment under the supervision of the Balcombe family. Although 13-year-old Betsy Balcombe inititally dubs him The Great Ogre, she ultimately bonds with the emperor-in-exile, forming an unlikely friendship that will have far-reaching consequences for Betsy and her family. For another fictional treatment of Napoleon and Betsy's unconventional relationship, check out Brooks Hansen's The Monsters of St. Helena.
After astronomer Arthur Ainsworth plummets from his rooftop observatory, his daughter Caroline learns that she's adopted, a discovery that forever alters the course of her life. Unfolding alongside Caroline's story is the parallel narrative of the elder Ainsworth's rival, musician-turned-astronomer William Herschel, and his sister and assistant, also named Caroline. At once a compelling family drama and an examination of Enlightenment-era scientific inquiry, The Blind Astronomer's Daughter may appeal to readers who enjoyed Carrie Brown's The Stargazer's Sister, which focuses on the Herschels.
One of the few women at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, Mileva Marić is the only female physics student in her class. Accustomed to being lonely and misunderstood, she's thrilled to find an intellectual and romantic partner in fellow student Albert Einstein. Then she becomes pregnant. Although Albert (eventually) agrees to marry her, he insists that she give up her research in order to focus on domestic duties. Meanwhile, her husband's womanizing ways cause her to reflect on how much she's sacrificed for the sake of marital harmony.
The daughter of a servant, Nelly Dean grows up at Wuthering Heights alongside the Earnshaw children, Catherine and Hindley. Although she realizes that she is not her companions' social equal, she's treated more or less as such...until the arrival of a strange orphan boy called Heathcliff, which sets in motion a series of tragic events familiar to fans of Emily Brontë's haunting novel. Fans of Jo Baker's Longbourn, which retells Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the servants' perspective, may be interested in Nelly Dean.
Set in Greenwich Village in the 1950s, this adaptation of Honoré de Balzac's Cousin Bette (by way of James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room) introduces Bette, a Midwestern transplant turned "spinster" secretary, and Earl, a gay, African-American struggling actor who works in a meatpacking plant. Rejected by their families of origin and unlucky in love, Bette and Earl are next-door neighbors who have built a strong friendship over the past three decades. Although the drama centers around the unexpected arrival of Bette's cousin, Hortense, the heart of the novel lies in its penetrating psychological portraits of the main characters and the vividly rendered urban setting they inhabit.