Grace Dong-Mei is adopted and taken to Canada. Watching the Tianenmen Square massacre on television prompts her to explore her Chinese ancestry and she begins to unlock the truth about what really happened to her almost 20 years before.

Interesting an easy to read book about a Canadian but Chinese born girl who had been adopted as a baby from a Chinese orphanage. As a child growing up in a supportive family she ignores her Chinese roots but as a teen she goes back to China by herself and manages to find her Chinese family. It is nice that we learn of her story from several different points of view, Grace herself, her mother, her birth mother, her birth grandfather and her birth father.

Picked up at the meetup with the Dunedin bookcrossers on Saturday.

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China's one child policy led to thousands (millions?) of female children, already undervalued in society, being abandoned or "accidentally" killed by parents desperate not to lose their chance of having a son. This book puts a human face to the statistics, following the story of one of the abandoned babies who is adopted by a Canadian family, and later returns to China to track down the woman who abandoned her. The changing narrative voice is a clever touch, making the harsh decisions the various characters face much more understandable and real. A gripping story, that I read in one sitting, unable to put it down.

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I was sitting in Northlands mall today, waiting for some other bookcrossers to show up for a meetup, when a couple of women walking past commented on the huge pile of books sitting on the table. Of course, I had to use the opportunity to explain Bookcrossing, and gave them a couple of books to take away with them.

Hope you enjoy reading them!

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