China Dolls

Set in the world of Chinese American nightclubs from the late 1930s through the postwar era, the novel follows three young women whose fierce ambitions and deep friendship are tested by betrayal, war, and long-buried secrets. The story is told in rotating first-person perspectives, spanning from the friends' first meeting in 1938 to an epilogue in 1988.

In October 1938, Grace Lee, a seventeen-year-old Chinese American dancer, arrives in San Francisco after fleeing her abusive father in Ohio. She hopes to find work at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island but is told there are no positions for an "Oriental girl" in the main shows. Directed to audition at new nightclubs opening in San Francisco's Chinatown, Grace meets Helen Fong, a twenty-year-old from one of Chinatown's most prominent families, and Ruby Tom, a vivacious nineteen-year-old who claims to be from Hawaii. The three form an immediate bond and audition together for the Forbidden City, a nightclub being built by Charlie Low, a local businessman. Grace and Helen are hired as chorus dancers, but Ruby is cut. When Helen's father arrives and identifies Ruby as Japanese, Grace is shocked. Ruby's real name is Kimiko Fukutomi, and she has been passing as Chinese since leaving her family in Hawaii. Helen, whose family survived the Japanese invasion of China, agrees to keep Ruby's secret despite deep hostility toward the Japanese.

The Forbidden City opens in December 1938 to great fanfare, featuring an all-Chinese revue. Grace leads the chorus line, while Helen compensates for her limited training with beauty and determination. Ruby finds work at Sally Rand's Nude Ranch, a risqué attraction at the Exposition. Grace begins dating Helen's brother Monroe but finds herself drawn instead to Joe Mitchell, a friendly college student she met on the ferry to Treasure Island. Unbeknownst to Grace, Joe and Ruby begin a secret relationship. When Grace discovers them together in the apartment she shares with Ruby, she is devastated and leaves for Los Angeles.

In Hollywood, Grace faces poverty, failed auditions, and sexual harassment from agents. Meanwhile, Helen has a brief affair and becomes pregnant. To avoid scandal, Eddie Wu, the Forbidden City's star dancer and a closeted gay man, marries Helen in a marriage of mutual convenience: Eddie gains a cover for his sexuality, and Helen gains respectability and a father for her child, Tommy. Eddie and Helen move to Los Angeles, where they reunite with Grace. The three form a dance trio called the Chinese Dancing Sweethearts and achieve modest bookings at Hollywood clubs. Their fortunes remain precarious until Charlie Low, now flush with success after a Life magazine feature, offers them a lucrative contract back at the Forbidden City.

Upon their return, Charlie dismantles the trio, putting Grace back in the chorus line and keeping Helen and Eddie as a featured dance pair. Ruby has also returned and is now the club's biggest star, performing under the stage name Princess Tai. Grace is relegated to working as Ruby's dresser, a humiliating but financially rewarding arrangement.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, shatters their world. Ruby's brother is killed, and her parents are detained by the FBI. In the charged aftermath, Helen reveals a devastating secret: Before coming to San Francisco, she was married in China. When Japanese soldiers invaded, they killed her husband, her in-laws, and her infant son, Dajun. Helen herself was assaulted and left for dead. The scar on her breast, which she had attributed to a car accident, was left by a soldier's bayonet. This revelation illuminates her complex feelings toward Ruby.

As wartime anti-Japanese sentiment intensifies, Ruby maintains her disguise. Joe enlists in the Army Air Forces and proposes to Ruby, but anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibit marriage between people of different races, block them in every state they try. In March 1943, FBI agents arrest Ruby on a film set in Hollywood, identifying her by her real name. Someone has informed on her. A distraught Joe accidentally strikes Grace when she steps between them. Ruby is sent to the Topaz War Relocation Center, a desolate internment camp in the Utah desert.

Grace replaces Ruby as the Forbidden City's headliner, billed as the "Oriental Danseuse." Vicious rumors circulate that she reported Ruby to the FBI, and the gossip makes Grace a pariah. Charlie fires her. Eddie, after being beaten by sailors in an alley, enlists in the army. Grace leaves San Francisco to tour the Chop-Suey Circuit, a network of nightclubs across the country that book Asian performers as novelty acts.

Ruby is released from Topaz after seventeen months and learns that her brother Yori has been killed in combat in Europe. She joins the Chop-Suey Circuit, and circumstances bring the three women back together for a touring revue. After the war, they settle first in Miami, then move to New York, where Grace and Ruby headline at the China Doll, a lavish club. Helen manages logistics and dances with a new partner. Eddie returns from war experiencing severe post-traumatic distress and is eventually unable to perform.

Ed Sullivan, host of the television variety program Toast of the Town, offers the three women a spot as a singing and dancing trio. They call themselves the Swing Sisters and prepare for a career-making debut. On the eve of the performance, Joe reappears. He walks with a cane, having lost a leg in combat. He proposes to Grace, confessing he has loved her all along, and she accepts.

When Grace shares the news, the announcement triggers a long-suppressed confrontation. Ruby accuses Grace of reporting her to the FBI, repeating what Helen has told her over years of private correspondence. Grace denies it. Helen then confesses: She was the informant. Driven by the trauma of her family's murder at the hands of Japanese soldiers and by years of jealousy, Helen reported Ruby's true identity. She also admits to fueling the rumors that destroyed Grace's reputation. Helen's confession culminates in the full account of her infant son's death, a story she has never told in its entirety. The revelations leave all three women shattered, but they reconcile before the broadcast. The next afternoon, Ruby pins white gardenias over each of their ears. Ed Sullivan introduces the Swing Sisters, and the three women take the stage together.

An epilogue set in 1988 shows Grace, now in her late sixties and married to Joe, attending a reunion of former nightclub performers in San Francisco. The gathering is a benefit for Eddie, who is dying from an unnamed illness. Grace spots Ruby and Helen across the room. When Charlie Low calls the three women to the dance floor, they arrange themselves in formation and begin to dance. Despite their age, their bodies remember the steps. Grace reflects that friends are better than sisters and that three are stronger than one.