A dreamlike haze shimmers over Ryan's debut, the tale of a real-life immigrants' enclave in early 20th-century California. In the mining town of Locke outside Sacramento, Richard Fong's Lucky Fortune casino and Poppy See's brothel provide the only entertainment for Chinese workers sending their wages back to the families they can't bring into the country. For Chloe, a white prostitute who is Richard's favorite, it's also a place to hide from her family just a few towns over. Mired in the past, the town's residents are jolted into the present when three strange Chinese women, including Richard's long-lost wife, arrive during the Dragon Boat Festival looking for their husbands. After years of her absence, Richard struggles to adapt his bachelor lifestyle to accommodate a woman who has become a stranger to him, and Chloe dreams of starting over somewhere new when Richard abandons her bed. Ryan's fluid flashbacks allow the past to sweep over the collective population of Locke, and her elegant female protagonists manage to exercise their own agency even when they're hemmed in by life in Locke. (Apr.)
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Water Ghosts: A Novel
Narrated by Laural Merlington
Shawna Yang RyanUnabridged — 6 hours, 33 minutes
Water Ghosts: A Novel
Narrated by Laural Merlington
Shawna Yang RyanUnabridged — 6 hours, 33 minutes
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Overview
Richard's wife's unexpected arrival complicates his life in no small way-not least with two prostitutes at the local brothel he frequents. One, the beautiful young Chloe, depends on him but has eyes for someone else, someone even more forbidden: the local preacher's daughter. The other, Poppy, the psychic madam of the brothel, is desperately in love with Richard, and she begins to sink into despair as he grows further and further away from her.
As the lives of the townspeople become inextricably intertwined with the newly arrived women, Poppy's premonitions begin to foretell a deep unhappiness for all involved. And when a flood threatens the livelihood of the entire town, the frightening power of these mysterious women who arrived in the mist will be revealed.
Editorial Reviews
This loosely historical piece set in 1928 centers on the lives of the Chinese and white residents of Locke, CA. The alcoholic Madam (Poppy) See, proprietor of the town's whorehouse, takes a pregnant, teenage Chloe Howell on as one of her girls, only to lose her lover, Richard Fong, to Chloe. Adding to this mix are Corlissa Lee, a white woman married to the local Chinese preacher, who assists three women smuggled from China, one being Richard's wife. Ryan's writing is reminiscent of that of Amy Tan and Lisa See because she incorporates elements of ghosts and tales of Chinese folklore and frequently provides backstories for her characters. As a whole, Ryan's debut feels forced, as the story moves slowly and meanders without providing enough significance to the nine principal characters she identifies in the book's opening. Several of them seem more like the minor characters that Ryan also lists. Despite this, Ryan's work maintains a lyrical and haunting quality throughout. Overall, this finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award is a good first effort, but only libraries with considerable budgets or demand for such historical works need consider.
—Shirley N. Quan
Using a handful of characters, debut novelist Ryan offers impressions of a Chinese-American community in 1920s California. Richard Fong is in bed with Chloe in a brothel. Down the hall, Poppy See mourns his abandonment of her, while on the river a craft bearing three mystery women gatecrashes the Dragon Boat Festival. The author offers a historically accurate portrait of Locke, an agricultural settlement near Sacramento leased to the Chinese by a white owner. The men work on the local ranches picking fruit and vegetables. We learn that 38-year-old Richard manages a gambling hall, that 17-year-old Chloe, the only Caucasian in the brothel, is his favored whore, that Poppy is the madam and that the arrival of the smuggled "boat-women" is a pivotal event. One of them is Ming Wai, who married Richard ten years earlier, in 1918, and lost face when he left China without her. Her two companions, given sanctuary in the church, have dozens of suitors in a town where men outnumber women 20 to one, but Ryan scants the comic/dramatic potential of this setup by skittishly turning her attention to other characters or evoking their pasts in their Chinese homeland. There's a second, lightly sketched interracial relationship involving a Chinese pastor and his white wife, whose teenage daughter, a stereotypical danger-courting runaway, has become friendly with Chloe. The only real plotline traces Richard's violent breakup with Chloe after his wife arrives; Poppy, a soothsayer, believes all three boat-women are water ghosts. The novel's supernatural and realistic elements compete awkwardly for dominance. The supposed ghosts get their chance to wreak havoc when the levees break, but despite a number of deathstheir status remains a mystery. Fascinating material clumsily shaped. Author events out of San Francisco. Agent: Daniel Lazar/Writers House
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171209087 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 05/04/2009 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 940,204 |
Read an Excerpt
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Acknowledgements
NOTES ON RESEARCH
About the Author
THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published in 2009 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All rights reserved
Originally published under the title Locke 1928 by El Leon Literary Arts
Excerpt from The Nobel Acceptance Speech by Toni Morrison, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Ryan, Shawna Yang, date.
Water ghosts : a novel / Shawna Yang Ryan.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-01446-2
1. Chinese—California—Delta Region—Fiction. 2. Immigrants—California—Delta Region—
Fiction. 3. Locke (Calif.)—Fiction. 4. Delta Region (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3618.Y344L63 2009
813’.6—dc22 2008029400
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
For my parents, Mike and Ellen
Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.
—TONI MORRISON
Nobel lecture, December 7, 1993
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Richard Fong (aka Fong Man Gum), manager of the Lucky
Fortune Gambling Hall
Ming Wai, Richard’s wife, one of three boat-women
Poppy See (aka Po Pei), brothel madam, seer
Chloe Virginia Howell, a prostitute in Madam See’s brothel,
Richard Fong’s lover
Howar Lee, preacher
Corlissa Lee, wife of preacher Howar Lee
Sofia Lee, their only daughter, friend of Chloe’s
So Wai, boat-woman
Sai Fung, boat-woman
MINOR CHARACTERS
Alfred, Chloe’s former lover
Barrett, Chloe’s former admirer
Lee Bing, founder of Locke
Tuffy Leamon, speakeasy owner
Uncle Happy, farm laborer
Cholly Wong, ill-fated rescuer of boat-women
Manny Chow, gambler
Mrs. Chow, bootlegger, wife of Manny Chow
Lau Sing Yan, Richard Fong’s childhood friend and rival
Sarah, Poppy See’s fellow dancer, adulteress
The butcher, Sarah’s lover, murderer
Ruby Moore, New York jazz singer
David Howell, Chloe’s brother
Jack Yang, restaurant owner
Lucy Yang, Jack Yang’s wife
PROLOGUE
The Founding (1915)
HER MIND WAS taken with the thought of pussy willows. She saw them in the market, long cut stems emerging from a bucket of water, ten cents a bunch. Each fistful tied with string. Her eyes lingered over them as she stood in line with a can of condensed milk. She weighed the can in her hand as she thought about the willows—which vase she might use, which corner or tabletop they might decorate. She lived in a small apartment—kitchen crowding into dining area crowding into sitting space crowding into a room for a bed. That was all. The way the light fell, through thick glass windows onto tea-colored walls, would turn the brown branches gold.
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