Righting Wrongs – The Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes

When the topic of the Chinese-American experience in contemporary literature arises, the authors most likely to come to mind are Amy Tan and Lisa See. Kelli Estes's first published book, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, makes the perfect shelf-mate to Tan's and See's works.

On the West Coast, and in other parts of the Far West that depended upon the labor and services of the Chinese, prejudice against them in the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth was intense. White culture completely dismissed the humanity of the Chinese and violent episodes took place. In some places, Chinese people, citizens or not, were forced out of their homes and driven out of the towns they lived in, including Seattle, where parts of The Girl Who Wrote in Silk are set.

The novel weaves back and forth between two stories. One is set in the late nineteenth century and its heroine is Liu Mei Lien. The outrages against the Chinese force Mei Lien (Liu is her family name, according to Chinese custom), her shopkeeper widower father and her frail grandmother to flee Seattle on a ship bound for China, according to an expulsion order from the city of all Chinese in February, 1886.

When it becomes clear that the Chinese passengers are in grave danger, Mei Lin's father forces her to jump off so she can save herself by swimming to a nearby island. There she is rescued by a kind white man and her story ensues.

The coordinating story takes place in our current decade and concerns Inara Erickson, a recent business school graduate, who has inherited a large family estate on that same island. Although her wealthy father, who owns an international shipping company, wants her to accept a job in business, Inara is insistent on following her own dream, following in the footsteps of the aunt who left her the property where she had hoped to establish an inn. She takes her aunt's dream farther by planning to turn the estate's buildings into a small luxury hotel and embarks on renovations.

Mei Lin's and Inara's stories are bound together when Inara discovers a beautiful, intricately bordered silk sleeve hidden in an old blanket beneath a wooden stair tread that has comes loose. How it got there and who had embroidered it became a mystery Inara has to solve, and her research leads her to Daniel Chin, a professor of Chinese history.

The book alternates between the two narratives, and gradually the details of the past and present mesh, through complex circumstances, into a well-rounded conclusion.

Estes has done considerable research into the painful backstory of the Chinese community in America, and deals very successfully with difficult issues, on one hand racial prejudice, and on the other, complex family relationships and loyalties. She portrays her characters with sensitivity and insight, and they, particularly Mei Lin, come to life.

While this is specifically a story about Chinese-Americans and the overwhelmingly white community they live in, it is also a bigger story about the United States and resonates with the issues that are threatening our country today. Estes couldn't have known when she was writing the novel prior to its 2015 publication just how prescient her book would turn out to be.