This is a powerful story spanning from Shanghai in 1886, when Adeline’s great aunt, at the age of 3, refuses to have her feet bound, to America in modern day. The opening scene is in a lawyer’s Hong Kong office in 1988. The first few words give the reader an idea of an extremely dysfunctional family.

Adeline seems to have it all. Her family is very wealthy. Her great aunt, with unbound feet, went on to be the founder of the Shanghai Women’s bank, and her father, a highly-successful businessman. An entrepreneur of sorts, he manages to turn a business profit in complex political situations and in any country he sees with possibilities; trading in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Nigeria.

Adeline grows up under a torrent of emotional abuse with physical threat a constant reality. Unwanted Chinese women littered the streets and brothels of China. Some parts of the book are difficult to read when you take into account how young Adeline is when it is all happening.

She is the fifth child in a family divided by two mothers. Adeline’s mother dies after giving her life, and this shame Adeline carries with her for many years. The woman her father re-marries sets the future for their family—scarring everyone from his own father and sister to grandchildren born in later years.

Adeline’s stepmother, Niang, is mean to the degree one must wonder what childhood she had suffered. It is not so much the narrow mind and total self-absorption of the stepmother that makes you weep for this little girl; it is more the unwillingness of any of her elder siblings to come to her rescue that breaks your heart.

Niang shows her true colors once her mother-in-law passes away. She is unkind to all the family, even her husband, who eventually dies a down-trodden man with all of his assets converted into cash or into his wife’s name so that none of his children inherit any of it. Despite this, all the children vie for her love and that of their father. Rather than bandying together, they are their own worst enemies.

Adeline’s only friends are her aunt and grandfather, but they, too, are financially dependent on her father and stepmother. Adeline’s most basic needs are denied—tram fare for a long ride to school must be begged for monthly. The children’s only clothes are their school uniforms. Worse is the complete denial of love or acceptance in the family. When Adeline wins an award at school, not one of her family attends. But worst is the story of her beloved duckling, sacrificed to her father’s German shepherd in a training session—one can hardly imagine such emotional cruelty.

In 1948, in the midst of civil war, Adeline is sent to live at a convent school in Tianjin under the threat of communist takeover. The nuns are under the orders that no family member is to visit, write, or communicate with her in any way. She is saved during the dangerous time of the takeover—but only as an afterthought by one of Niang’s relatives. A year later, she is transferred to a similar school in Hong Kong. Here, Adeline finds she is again at the bottom of the hierarchy, which is based on visits and attentions from your family.

Despite all this abuse, Adeline grows into a successful and intelligent woman. Her need to be accepted and loved, at least by her father, never leaves her heart. But when she marries, can she truly feel acceptance and realize the significance of her past?

Adeline’s story is powerful yet is told in a very gentle and suspenseful tone. It is so well worth the read—I thoroughly recommend it.