Chinese by birth, Eurasian by blood, Mei-Ling Wang's extraordinary life is a mirror of our time. Born in China in 1949, the year of the Red Army's entry into Beijing, she is the daughter of an English mother and Chinese father who share the Communist vision of a more perfect future. Mei-ling grows to womanhood amid the violent passions and numbing brutality unleashed by the Cultural Revolution. In 1968, as a tidal wave of political turmoil engulfs the globe, Mei-Ling, penniless, is forced to flee her homeland. She embarks on an odyssey that carries her from China to Hong Kong to Europe to North America. Beautiful and intelligent, compelled by necessity and desire, Mei-Ling threads her way carefully among the men who love her and use her. She discovers the power of sex and the lure of wealth; she mastered the art of survival. When she returns to Hong Kong and China in 1997, the colony and the mainland are about to become one country again. The People's Republic and the daughter who was forced to flee its shores so long before have been tempered by their struggles and stripped of their illusions. They are wealthy and strong. But they have been forced to relinquish the ideals that first brought them into being. Flowers for Mei-Ling is an epic story that propels the reader through fifty years of tumultuous events. With this panoramic first novel, Lorraine Lochs joins that company of ambitious novelists who explore both public affairs and private passions with understanding and conviction. She makes history live.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
This first novel follows the journey of Mei-Ling Wang from a young Communist idealist in Mao's Red Guards to a wealthy businesswoman running a contemporary art gallery in Montreal. Told from the perspectives of Mei-Ling and the three men who love her, Flowers is a complex portrait of a woman whose values have been tempered by poverty and the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Her first husband, a drug dealer, teaches her that money and property are often one's only advantage in a world of shifting political landscapes. Her second husband, a Vietnam-era draft resister and idealist, is unable to accept the choices that survival has forced Mei-Ling to make. This artfully told story brilliantly demonstrates how the personal is subject to the political in a world where no one is truly safe. Combining believable characterizations with an insightful historical depiction of the last 50 years, Lachs has written a genuine page-turner as fresh as today's news and as timeless as any good love story.?Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Lachs has penned an achingly beautiful and heartrending tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit. As the Eurasian daughter of dedicated Communist intellectuals who are viciously betrayed during the purges accompanying Mao's Cultural Revolution, Mei-Ling Wang's innocence is permanently shattered by the harsh and brutal reality she experiences as both a member and a victim of the Red Guard. Escaping to Hong Kong with her physically and emotionally devastated mother, Mei-Ling is determined to salvage the wreckage of their lives. Realizing that financial security is the key to survival, she forgoes love and passion for the comfort and stability she enjoys as the mistress of an amoral Dutch businessman. Living first in Europe then in Canada, Mei-Ling eventually realizes that she must come full circle and return to China in order to reclaim her lost soul. An empathetic and absolutely entrancing narrative portrait of one woman's remarkable quest to triumph over the random cruelty of historical circumstance. Margaret Flanagan
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful book,
This review is from: Flowers for Mei-Ling (Hardcover)
I read this novel over six years ago and it has stayed with me. The story is tightly told and vividly painful as Mei-Ling struggles to survive. She sells herself for safety and is beaten, raped, but still manages to overcome these problems in order to raise her daughter.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Captivating,
By A Customer
This review is from: Flowers for Mei-Ling (Hardcover)
Excellent thought-provoking book
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