New Novel by Nicki Chen Set in Wartime Paints Portrait of Resilience, Love
EDMONDS, Wash. – (PRWEB) August 12, 2014 -- Pregnancy isn’t an easy burden at any time, but facing childbirth – and motherhood – with a missing husband and falling bombs is nearly unendurable. The woman at the center of this new novel is pregnant and hoping for news of her husband as she begins to hear bombs exploding in the distance. Although initially their island on the coast of China is spared because of its status as an international treaty port, on Dec. 7, 1941 the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, everything changes.
“Tiger Tail Soup: A Novel of China at War,” is set in Kulangsu, the “island of pianos.” It tells the story of An Lee, a young woman whose husband becomes a soldier, leaving her alone to protect their two children, her mother and her mother-in-law from the invading Japanese forces. Refusing to escape to Hong Kong or Manila and leave her crippled mother behind, An Lee and her family gamble on staying, a choice that will have lasting consequences for them all.
During her pregnancy, An Lee dreams repeatedly of white tigers and a dog-eating monk, a sign, she’s told by a famous abbot, of an illustrious future for her unborn son. Two years later, after spending a rare night with her husband, she gives birth to a second son. When Japanese troops march on Kulangsu the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the island’s existence as neither occupied nor free immediately changes. An Lee struggles against the occupation, lending her help to an underground organization, but the loss of two of the people she holds most dear leads her down a dark path from which she may never recover.
Author Nicki Chen, a freelance writer and blogger, has loved stories since her father returned from World War II and invented stories to tell his 3-year-old daughter. She earned an MFA through Vermont College of Fine Arts after moving to the South Pacific, traveling twice a year from Port Vila, Vanuatu, to Montpelier, Vt., and back. Chen immersed herself in Asian cultures while she lived in the Philippines with her daughters and husband, Eugene Yu-wei Chen. The stories he told about his childhood in China later inspired the book. Chen is a graduate of Seattle University and belongs to the Ladies Writing Club of Perrinville. She writes the blog Behind the Story, and she’s working on her second novel.
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For additional information, please visit http://www.nickichenwrites.com.
Tiger Tail Soup: A Novel of China at War
Nicki Chen
Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-4575-2675-6 288 pages $16.95 US
Available at Ingram, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and fine bookstores everywhere.
About Dog Ear Publishing, LLC
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