Daughters of the Sun and Moon

Set in 1870s Los Angeles and framed by the retrospective voice of an elderly narrator in 1926, the novel tells the interlocking stories of three Chinese women whose lives converge on the Calle de los Negros, the center of the city's tiny Chinese community. Moon, a doctor's wife, looks back from old age; Petal, a peasant girl sold into sexual slavery, speaks in first person as events unfold; and Dove, a young bride, is narrated in third person.

In 1870, 17-year-old Yut Ho, known as Dove, is the daughter of an impoverished scholar in Canton, China. A matchmaker arranges her marriage to Old Man Sing, a wealthy 60-year-old merchant in Los Angeles, and her father accepts a lavish bride price. Dove crosses the Pacific with her brother, Ah Guey. In San Francisco, Headman Sam Yuen, leader of a criminal organization called the Nin Yung Tong, meets Dove and puts her on a steamer south. She has only minutes to say goodbye to Ah Guey, who vows to watch over her from afar.

Petal, an 18-year-old from the starving village of Moon Pond, is tricked by her father into boarding a boat in Canton. An agent of the Hip Yee Tong, a criminal trafficking organization, has her sign a contract she cannot read; her father receives 40 silver dollars and leaves. Petal is shipped across the Pacific in the hold of the steamship Great Republic with over 200 women and girls, many destined for prostitution or servitude. On deck she glimpses Dove boarding the upper level of the same ship. In San Francisco, Headman Sam buys Petal at auction for 800 dollars, outbidding Headman Yo Hing, leader of the rival Hong Chow Tong, and seals her in a crate for the voyage south.

Moon, narrating at age 82, introduces herself as the wife of Dr. Chee Long "Gene" Tong, the most respected Chinese man in Los Angeles. She describes the city as a violent pueblo of about 5,000 people with only 179 Chinese residents, who could not own land, vote, testify against white Americans, or marry a white person. Moon was born in Hong Kong, educated by her doctor father, and left with a permanent limp from a failed footbinding. Gene, her father's apprentice, married her and left to work on the transcontinental railroad before returning and insisting they move to Los Angeles. Moon longs for a child.

The three women meet in Moon's apartment the day Dove and Petal arrive. Old Man Sing brings Dove for a virginity examination; Headman Sam deposits the beaten Petal for medical treatment. Moon reads Petal's contract aloud: four years of forced prostitution, with extensions for illness, escape, or pregnancy. Dove takes Petal's hand. The three form an immediate bond, and Petal vows to comply outwardly while secretly planning her freedom.

The women settle into constrained lives. Petal services multiple men nightly at the Midnight Garden, Headman Sam's brothel. Dove is confined to her husband's shop, displayed for customers but forbidden from leaving. Dove and Moon communicate through wordless exchanges at Moon's threshold. Petal's first escape attempt fails when Three-Finger Lee, Headman Yo's henchman, catches her outside the building. Later, Headman Yo's men kidnap and torture her. After each recapture, Headman Sam beats her brutally. A second escape, in which she disguises herself as a boy and walks nearly to Santa Barbara, also ends in capture.

During recovery in Moon's apartment, Moon proposes that Petal grow medicinal herbs for Doctor Tong. Petal begins planting seeds on her windowsill at the Midnight Garden. Auntie Fong, a worker there, discovers the garden but demands a share of profits rather than reporting it. Moon helps Petal compose a letter asking her family to send her brother Ah Loo to Los Angeles.

In early 1871, Three-Finger Lee kidnaps Dove from her husband's apartment, forces her through a sham Western marriage, and delivers her to a house near Poundcake Hill. Silver Shimmer, Headman Yo's wife, reveals the plan: Headman Yo needs a son, and Silver Shimmer's spinal condition prevents her from bearing children. Dove, secretly pregnant by Old Man Sing, submits but miscarries after 11 weeks. Three-Finger Lee, who tends to Dove daily, falls in love with her and begins bringing embroidery supplies. She sends him to Petal to buy thread, opening a secret channel of communication.

Meanwhile, Doctor Tong negotiates a deal allowing Petal to tend a leased plot on the Apablasa ranch, where her herb garden thrives. Ah Loo arrives, barely 14, and Doctor Tong arranges a kitchen job for him at the Teutonia Hall, a local restaurant. Petal contracts syphilis but continues working. Tensions between the tongs escalate through the fall of 1871. On October 23, assassins hired by Headman Sam wound Headman Yo on the Calle de los Negros. The next evening, Hong Chow Tong men retaliate, a gunfight erupts, and a white rancher named Robert Thompson is killed. A mob of over 500 people descends on the Chinese quarter.

Petal narrates the siege from inside the Forever Prosperous store, where rioters break through the roof. She spots Ah Loo outside with his kitchen supervisors. Disguising herself in a tunic, she navigates the chaos and watches helplessly as the cooks are hanged and stabbed and her 14-year-old brother is hanged while screaming for her. Moon is dragged to Tomlinson's Corral, where the mob strips Gene, cuts off his finger for his diamond ring, shoots him, and hangs his body. Mrs. Grascy, Gene's former patient, offers her clothesline as rope. Dove, isolated near Poundcake Hill, watches the lynchings from her window. Three-Finger Lee enters, tells Dove that Old Man Sing has taken a new wife, and rapes her.

During the chaos, Auntie Fong hides Headman Sam's treasure chest in the kitchen oven. Petal disguises the money as a bundled baby and buries it in her herb garden. The next morning, Moon discovers she is pregnant: Gene's dying words about protecting the baby referred not to Winter Melon, the couple's white poodle, but to the child he had detected by monitoring Moon's pulse each night.

Moon files a criminal complaint against Headman Yo and uses it as leverage, offering not to testify before the grand jury in exchange for Dove's release. The three women reunite on the Apablasa property. Auntie Fong and two newer Midnight Garden women, Oriole and Swallow, divide a share of the treasure, buy their freedom, and leave for San Francisco. Petal buys out her contract, tearing it up in Headman Sam's face. Dove, traumatized and bedridden, realizes she is pregnant by Three-Finger Lee.

Seven defendants are found guilty of manslaughter for Doctor Tong's death, but the California Supreme Court reverses all convictions on a technicality. Moon gives birth to a son she names Gene; nine days later, Dove gives birth to a daughter she names Pearl. Petal, who will never have children because of her syphilis, becomes a devoted auntie to both.

From 1926, Moon describes the decades that followed. The three women built a life on the Apablasa property. After a fire destroyed the Calle de los Negros in 1886, the rancher Cayetano Apablasa subdivided his land for Chinese families, creating the city's first Chinatown. Moon leased farmland and opened businesses; Dove earned money through embroidery; Petal tended her garden for 40 years before dying, her mind clear to the end. Now 82, Moon sits with the elderly, blind Dove as their families gather, insisting that while city leaders have tried to erase the massacre, the three women's stories of bravery, endurance, and freedom must not be forgotten.