PROLOGUE Guangzhou, China Three Years Ago Li Jing stands holding a sheet of soggy cardboard over her head and looking down into the deep muddy ditch that separates the factory owned dormitory where she lives from the narrow road. Overnight terrible rains have flooded the streets and water has overflowed the gutters and entered the […]
Her brother called me last night. He has this voice, like a radio jazzman. Low and round. Makes you feel like you’re swallowing it right through the phone. “Valerie?” He says. “It’s Allen,” he tells me. I already know because, unlike me, my phone never forgets a name. “News isn’t good,” he says. “Yeah,” […]
There’s something wrong with my hands. Lately, I’ve taken to squeezing them into fists at the most peculiar times. When I’m checking out at the grocery store. Face timing my daughter who is away at college. Making love to my husband. My thumbs ache and I’ve noticed the knuckles on my right swell to the […]
Prologue January 6, 1982 There is a fear I live with all the time. It’s like a shawl around my shoulders that I cannot remove. Today has been a hard day. Gray skies and a chill in the air that bites like razors. Clothes refuse to dry on the line, and a particular angry whistle […]
I was twenty-eight years old when I first met Janie. I was a writer living in San Francisco scratching out a living writing ad copy and freelancing for various independent pseudo political publications which were, by and large, not very good. Like most writers, I also had a day job to pay the real bills […]
