This is a beautiful, but sad, story written in a flowing way that is easy to read and hard to put down. In the initial pages, I thought to myself, "where is this story going? How is the author going to maintain a story line throughout the length of the book?" But then I had that ah-ha moment when I saw that Ford was taking us back in time to visit the mother of young William and the background for the "why" William was in an orphanage and not with his mother.What I liked as much as the story itself, was the history of Seattle that poured out of the pages of this book. Places like the Bush Hotel in the International District and Sacred Heart Orphanage in Laurelhurst, backstage at the 5th Avenue Theatre, and at the Wah Mee Club “in the belly of Maynard Alley." Some of these places still exist and for me to imagine William entering the 5th Avenue Theater, a place I myself have been, was like seeing it through his eyes as it must have been back in the 1930s.This is as much a story of the hardships families went through during the Great Depression and parents having to give up their children as they couldn't put food on the table or clothe them or even give them a safe place to live. Many of the "orphans" in William's orphanage had parents and these kids were hoping they would come back to get them. Some would, most wouldn't.Good story. I think I might have even liked it better than Ford's other book, “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.” Two stories ate told, one of a Chinese boy in an orphanage in 1934, in Seattle during the depression; the other of his mother in the 1920s. They combine to tell the story of this mother-child relationship and how it came to be what it is. Life was rough for orphans and abandoned children during the Depression, and life was rough for first generation Asian Americans in the 20s, so the book was fairly depressing to me. There was a lot of hope, but a lot of it unfulfilled, and I'm not sure the ending was enough for me.
Do You like book Songs Of Willow Frost (2013)?
I have read and enjoyed two books by this author. Similar to Amy Tan.
—P0P3
Found it to be very enjoyable, although also very sad.
—yetundemama70
Good... but not as good as his first book.
—nightgod
