By 
WOW! Jane Yang, the Author of “The Lotus Shoes” has written a powerful, captivating, and intriguing novel. The Genres for this novel are: Historical Chinese Fiction, Cultural Heritage Fiction, Women’s Friendship Fiction, Historical Fiction, and Fiction. This is an amazing, well written, thought-provoking novel in China in the 1800s. There is disparity, diversion and inequality among classes. There is a difference between cultural classes, wealthy vs. poverty, classes among familial women’s hierarchy, and differences between men and women. The sign of a noble and honorable woman was to have “golden lilies”, or tightly bound feet. Embroidery and artistic ability was also very important.
Little Flower is sold as a child to be the “slave” to Linjing, a daughter of the prominent Fong family. When she is sold, she has golden lilies, which her mother had hoped would bring her a better life. Linjing’s father believes in the western ways, and feels that “golden lilies’ are outdated, so that Linjing doesn’t need to have her feet bound. Linjing is jealous and insists that Little Flower has her bound feet unbound. Little Flower has extraordinary embroidery skills, which are almost magical. Linjing has problems with embroidery, and is jealous of Little Flower’s talents. Linjing seems to do everything possible to jeopardize Little Flower’s chance of escape and freedom.
When tragedy occurs, Linjing finds herself in a difficult situation, and insists that Little Flower accompany her. Linjing tells Little Flower that they are friends. Little Flower wants to be considered an equal to Linjing. Linging will be given a choice to be a friend, or to protect and save Little Flower. What do you think will happen?
In this historical fiction novel, I learned many things that I never thought about in the 1800 period in China. This is such a memorable and thought-provoking novel. I highly recommend this to other readers.
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