The Girls of Good Fortune

A work of historical fiction by American author Kristina McMorris, The Girls of Good Fortune (2025) draws attention to the violence and hostility that Chinese immigrants faced in the American Northwest during the latter years of the 19th century. The protagonist, Celia (who has a Chinese father and white mother, and who is passing for white) is raising her child in Portland, Oregon, and awaiting the return of her baby’s father when she is shanghaied and delivered onto a ship. As she fights to gain her freedom and return to her daughter, Celia observes what life is like for others who are marginalized or living in precarious circumstances. This dire experience sets her on a course to claim her own identity as she reunites her family.

Kristina McMorris also wrote the New York Times bestselling novel Sold on a Monday (2018). In The Girls of Good Fortune, McMorris draws upon her own experience as the daughter of a Japanese American parent to illustrate issues of belonging, the challenges of navigating racial and cultural prejudices, working for justice, and clinging to hope despite adversity.

This guide refers to the trade paperback edition published by Sourcebooks in 2025.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide include depictions of racism, gender discrimination, violence, death, suicidal ideation, and substance use. There are also uses of offensive but previously commonly used language in reference to some ethnic groups.

Plot Summary

In the Prologue, an unnamed narrator is preparing to visit a cemetery as she reflects on the power of stories like those of her family.

The narrative then shifts to July 1888 as a young woman named Celia wakes up in an underground holding cell. To her confusion, she is dressed as a man. She realizes that she is imprisoned in the tunnels below Portland, Oregon. She is given food that turns out to be drugged, and when she wakes up again, she finds herself aboard a ship at sea.

The narrative shifts to a second storyline that is set approximately three years earlier, in June 1885. At this earlier point, Celia Hart is 18 years old and is working as a servant for the Bettencourt family. Edwin Bettencourt is the mayor of Portland, Oregon, and his wife, Georgia, is very concerned about appearances. The Bettencourts recently learned through their young daughter, Abigail, that Celia has a Chinese father who is working in a coal mine in Wyoming Territory. Celia, whose white mother died of tuberculosis, has been passing for white in order to get a job. She is in love with the Bettencourts’ son, Stephen, who is leaving soon to attend college at Oxford University in England. Before he leaves, Stephen proposes marriage to Celia and promises to return in three years. They agree to keep their engagement a secret.

Celia is shocked to learn that in the town of Rock Springs, where her father works, an angry mob of white people attacked the Chinese immigrants whom they believed were endangering their jobs. Celia’s father was one of the men killed. Although a trial is held, no one is charged with a crime, and Celia grieves at the lack of justice. She sees anti-Chinese sentiment growing in Portland as well, including racist rhetoric from one of the mayor’s friends, Gordon Humphrey.

When Celia realizes that she is pregnant, the Bettencourts arrange for her to take a position as housekeeper at the Dewdrop Inn, which is a brothel. Celia is ashamed to live in such a place, but she gradually befriends one of the girls, Lettie, who is from Ireland. She learns that Lettie previously gave up her daughter for adoption, but when Celia gives birth, she finds that she cannot bring herself to do the same. She believes that Stephen will return, even though she has had no contact with him, and she wants to keep her daughter, whom she names Pearl. Marie, the Chinese woman who runs the brothel, agrees. When Celia is sent on an errand to a place in Chinatown to procure opium for Marie, she witnesses a rally of Chinese workers reacting to growing policies of discrimination and exclusion. Later, after a fraught night in which Marie, Lettie, and Celia work together to fight a fever that endangers Pearl’s life, Celia feels that the brothel is becoming a home.

When Pearl is two, Celia learns from Abigail that Stephen intends to marry another woman. Shortly after this, she encounters a young man named Frank Vaughan, who confesses to killing several Chinese gold miners along the Snake River in a place called Hells Canyon. Horrified by the crime, Celia persuades Frank to confess to the authorities. Celia attends to the trial, for the first time admitting to Marie that she has a Chinese father and feels personally invested in the outcome. The trial results in sentences for three of the gang members who have already fled. Celia feels that this is not a just sentence, so she approaches Edwin Bettencourt; if he does not act, she threatens to expose the fact that Pearl is Stephen’s daughter. However, Bettencourt merely turns her out of his house.

Lettie says that she has met a man named Owen who knows where the fugitives are hiding, so Celia dresses as a man to meet Owen at a gambling den in town. During the confusion of a raid on the premises, Owen and Celia are shanghaied and sold to a ship’s captain heading to San Francisco. Celia clings to her disguise as a man in order to protect herself from the other sailors, and she and Owen manage to jump ship when it docks in San Francisco. Celia has several adventures on her way home to Pearl; she camps overnight with other transients, is briefly jailed for stealing bread, and is sentenced by the judge to be sent to an asylum. She also learns that Gordon Humphrey, the mayor’s racist friend, is the man responsible for trying to get her to leave Portland. Owen bails Celia out of jail by pretending to be her husband, and the two hop a freight train back to Portland.

When Celia returns, she tracks down Marie and Pearl at the place where she bought Marie’s opium, and she is stunned to find Stephen there. She learns that he returned home, talked to his sister Abigail, and immediately sought out Celia and Pearl. He is not engaged to another woman; he wants to marry Celia. Together, Celia and Stephen confront Edwin Bettencourt and Gordon Humphrey. Humphrey pulls a gun to try to threaten Celia into silence, and when Stephen defends her, Humphrey is shot. Georgia Bettencourt realizes that she must acknowledge the fact that Stephen loves Celia.

In the Epilogue, the elderly narrator from the Prologue is revealed to be Pearl’s daughter and Celia’s granddaughter. She takes a newspaper article to the cemetery to deliver to the graves of her grandparents. The article explains the full story of what happened in the Hells Canyon massacre: information that never came to light in the trial. The narrator reflects on her pride in her background, especially her lively grandmother Celia. She concludes that even if it is too late for justice, it is never too late for the truth.