A Map of Paradise [Paperback]

Linda Ching Sledge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1997

The acclaimed author of Empire of Heaven, called by the New York Times "a Chinese Gone With the Wind," now creates a richly told immigrant saga of ninteenth-century Hawaii.

With its green cliffs and silvery waterfalls, Hawaii offers radiant hope to Rulan and Pao An--exiles from Chinese tyranny, immigrants with the will to succeed despite hardship and prejudice and enemies from their homeland.  But this proud couple's hardest struggle will be with their own child--Mulan, called Molly.  Born in Hawaii's sacred hills, Molly grows to despise the old Chinese ways.  Locked in perpetual combat with her new parents, she is drawn into a dangerous love affair with a glamorous but decadent poet, a protege of the king.  And even as the family's fortunes rise, Molly's mother watches in sorrow, fearing that her child will realize too late that happiness lies far closer to home.

Beautifully told, A Map of Paradise  offers the colorful sweep of history with the satisfaction of characters intimately revealed.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Set in Hawaii and California in the late 1800s, Sledge's second novel is a sequel to Empire of Heaven (LJ 4/15/90). Reemerging in this work are two Chinese exiles, Rulan and her husband, Pao An, who have now left Hong Kong with the intention of rebuilding their lives in Hawaii, the land they assume is paradise. But after Pao An sells himself as a coolie in exchange for passage, misfortune separates the couple. Rulan is left alone and pregnant in Hawaii while in California Pao An struggles to find his way back to his wife. Steeped in historical detail, Sledge's work reads like an epic, complete with fully developed characters. Her narrative is lush, giving readers a true sense of the period. Glossaries of Hawaiian and Chinese terms are included at the end of the book. Recommended for larger historical and romantic fiction collections.?Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Garden Grove, Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Unusual historical accuracy distinguishes an otherwise formulaic novel of a plucky Chinese family: a portrait of Tang immigrants, on whose backs so much of the infrastructure of California and Hawaii was built. Sledge's second (Empire of Heaven, 1990) opens as peasant general Pao An and his warrior wife Rulan, an escaped concubine, flee a failed Taiping rebellion by signing on as indentured servants for the sugarcane plantations of Hawaii. But Pao An is shipped instead to California, spending the next seven years building the dikes that tamed the Sacramento Delta floodplains, becoming witness to nature's awesome calamities and the even worse cruelties of racist white settlers. Rulan has an easier time as a much-loved servant in Hawaii for a patrician but childless New England minister and his wife, whose love for Rulan's daughter, Molly, provides a surprising plot twist: On Pao An's return, Molly will hate him for forcing the little family to live in Chinatown's cramped poverty. She also hates her father's orphan-boy companion, Lin Kong, tormenting him every chance she gets--which, of course, means that the two are destined for each other. Throughout, Sledge delivers tremendous set-pieces--a killer flood in California, a dizzy soiree between King Kalakaua and Robert Louis Stevenson on the King's yacht, a nuanced look at the still-controversial annexation of Hawaii by US sugar planters--even though the characters here sometimes have trouble catching their breath while jogging through fires, hurricanes, Tong warfare, love affairs, and economic ups and downs. A superior work of history, then, with some genuinely affecting moments among its fictional characters--and a demonstration of how much of the West was East in the rambunctious Manifest Destiny days of the late 19th century. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (July 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553378902
• ISBN-13: 978-0553378900
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,648,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't Let the Title Deter You, August 15, 2002

By 

Rick (Hong Kong, China) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Map of Paradise: A Novel of Nineteenth-Century Hawaii (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a fine novel, in my opinion. The title is bland and can give one the impression that they are about to read an annotated atlas or something. Regardless, after reading the first dozen pages or so you will get a real feel for this book. As the published reviewer notes, it adheres to historical accounts exceptionally well. This novel could be read by both older adolescents with good command of language and adults. Its use of local color (California, Hawaii) is also exceptional and while some stock characterization is done, overall the effort is quite literary. I found it to be solid historical fiction of a sort. So ignore the knee-jerk PC reviewer who couldn't get past the cover (by the way, just where is that Yalie she's talking about?) and give it a try. If the plot doesn't hold you, you are likely to become better informed on Hawaii's colonial period.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Paradise wasn't easy, April 24, 2003

By 

Barbara Stockman (Parsippany, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Map of Paradise (Paperback)

Having lived in both Hawaii & the Sacramento area, I enjoyed the local history through the experiences of a Chinese immigrant family struggling to build a better life in the Western states. Will view the levees around Sacramento with new eyes!

5.0 out of 5 stars Chinese laborers helped build California and settle Hawaii, January 5, 2010

By 

Harvee L. - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Map of Paradise: A Novel of Nineteenth-Century Hawaii (Mass Market Paperback)

Rating: I gave this novel five stars for its descriptive storytelling and its detailed historical content on the Hawaiian kingdom and the settling of immigrants there in the late 1800s. It may not be a complete history, but enough to get a sense of the turmoil and hardship of the times.

This historical novel describes the arrival of the Chinese as laborers for the sugar plantations in Hawaii in the mid 1800s, and of their gradual integration into the island economy as farmers, traders, and businessmen. The novel tells of the exhaustive work in forming a Chinatown community out of the two warring groups of Chinese - the Punti and Hakka clans.

The book also details the history of the Hawaiian kingdom and the dying off of important members of its royal family in the latter part of the 19th century, giving way to increasing American and British influence and control of the islands.

The Chinese immigrant Pao An worked shoring up levees in California before joining his wife Rulan and their daughter in Hawaii, a land they called the Blessed Isles. There they built a life for themselves and formed a community with other immigrants. The core of the novel are the love stories of Pao An and his wife Rulan, of their daughter Molly and the half-Hawaiian poet she lived with and loved, and of the quiet boy Lin Kong, whom Molly had spurned since childhood.