The Valley of Amazement
by Amy Tan
The book takes place in turn of the century Shanghai and introduces you to the world of the courtesan. Violet an immature Half-Chinese and half-American girl is the daughter of an American madam of the city’s most exclusive courtesan house. She is caught between the two ethnic worlds and is uncertain of where she belongs. Violet desperately wants to know more about the mysterious father that has been kept a secret from her, but her mother, Lucia, finds it hard to let old wounds re-open. She feels betrayed by her mother’s love and finds herself alone at fourteen kidnapped and sold into the life of a courtesan.
Violet soon learns if she wants to survive in this life she must take the knowledge and savvy she learned from watching other courtesans growing up, and her mother’s skill in diplomacy and make her own way. She soon becomes one of the most celebrated courtesans in Shanghai. But her quest to be truly loved will set her on a journey filled with danger and the loss of her own daughter who is taken from her as a toddler and brought back to America.
Lucia, a willful young American woman who fell in love with a Chinese painter and then followed him from San Francisco to Shanghai believes she has finally found the love she has been longing for her whole life. But she soon finds that Chinese traditions will not allow their love to grow and must make her own way in a foreign land. She must take care of her daughter, Violet, and uses her cunning American charm to become a self-made businesswoman as a proprietress of a courtesan house.
Both women’s journey will lead to a reunion and show that the bond of a mother’s love even through decades of unforgivable acts is enduring.
The book is a beautiful but tragic tale of the lives of three generations of women connected by blood and the mystery of an evocative painting known as “The Valley of Amazement.” Spanning forty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement is filled with family secrets and the profound connections between mothers and daughters.