With the whole country talking about identity politics, racism and cultural awareness, Peter Ho Davies' provocative new novel could not be more timely. Told from the points of view of four different characters over a century and a half, The Fortunes documents the history of the Chinese in America beginning in the mid-1900s. The pattern of 19th-century immigration and current Chinese adoptions is comprised of first men, and then girls, without families. With this in mind, Davies re-envisions the genre of the multigenerational saga. 

The novel's artful structure allows for four distinct stories, three of which are drawn from historical sources. The son of a prostitute and a white man, or "ghost," Ah Ling is sold off to a laundry in California. By 1860, he had become a personal assistant to a railroad baron, but then chose to work alongside his countrymen on the transcontinental railroad. The second story is told by Anna May Wong. Born in the United States, Wong was Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, yet she repeatedly lost key roles to white actresses playing in yellowface. Four decades later, an unnamed friend of Vincent Chin's remembers the night Chin was beaten to death outside a Detroit bar during the height of the import auto scare of the early 1980s. Finally, in the last section, Mike Smith, a biracial writer, and his Caucasian wife, Nola, travel to China to adopt a baby girl. In each of these stories, Davies' characters wrestle with their Chinese identity and what it means to become an American. 

The scope and research of The Fortunes is impressive, but what makes the novel memorable is the honesty of each narrative voice, whether it's the loneliness of Ah Ling, the bitter wit of Anna May Wong, or the unease of Vincent's friend as he sifts through his memories of that terrible night. But it is the utter intimacy and introspection of the final section, "Pearl," that digs the deepest. Though it is the section told with the most humor, this is the one that will break your heart. Davies, whose previous novel, The Welsh Girl, was a nominee for the Man Booker Prize, has written a masterful, perceptive and very modern look at identity, migration and the intertwined histories of the United States and China.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The son of a Welsh father and a Chinese mother, Davies was proclaimed among the Best Young British Novelists by Granta; his first novel, The Welsh Girl, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. This second novel explores the Chinese American immigrant experience. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Davies (The Welsh Girl) opens this novel on the Chinese American experience with "Gold," taking readers back to California's infamous Gold Rush as the Eurasian Ling struggles to make a living in a stereotypical laundry/brothel and falls in love with one of the women there. "Silver" focuses on the silver screen and the career of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star. Things turn darker in "Jade," featuring the brutal death of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man murdered in 1982 by disgruntled auto plant workers who mistake him as Japanese. In the final piece, "Pearl," a half-Chinese American writer and his Irish American wife set off to China in hopes of adopting a little girl. While there, John Ling Smith reflects upon his heritage while facing his own concerns about assimilation and discrimination for himself and for his family. VERDICT The absence of a contiguous story line may initially alarm, but patient readers will discover how cleverly Davies interweaves fact and fiction to pull the novel together and show how far Chinese Americans have progressed—and how great the journey ahead is. A thought-provoking literary work for individuals interested in the Asian American experience. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/16, as Tell It Slant.]—Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

Though billed as a novel, The Fortunes could more aptly be described as a collection of four novellas, each of which explores a different facet of Chinese-American experience. The first section, "Gold," is set during the mid-19th century and follows Ling, an orphan, from his childhood on Pearl River in China to Gold Mountain, Calif., where he works first in a laundry and then as a valet before becoming an unlikely organizer of Chinese workers building the Central Pacific Railway. In "Silver," Davies imagines the lonely inner life of 1930s actress Anna May Wong, Hollywood's first Chinese-American star, who has affairs with many leading men but never marries any of them. "Jade" takes place in the 1980s, against the backdrop of the dying American auto industry, and focuses on the mistaken identity of a Chinese-American man taken to be Japanese in a deadly strip club brawl. In "Pearl," the final section, a present-day middle-aged American writer, whose mother was from China, now finds himself there for the first time to adopt a baby girl with his Caucasian wife. The book's scope is impressive, but what's even more staggering is the utter intimacy and honesty of each character's introspection. More extraordinary still is the depth and the texture created by the juxtaposition of different eras, making for a story not just of any one person but of hundreds of years and tens of millions of people. Davies (The Welsh Girl) has created a brilliant, absorbing masterpiece. Agent: Maria Massie, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. (Sept.)