What Am I Reading Now?

I finished Killing Lincoln last week (and enjoyed it very much--learned a LOT!), but haven't had time until now to post about what I'm reading next. I've decided to read all the finalists in the historical category for the 2011 Whitney Award. I'm starting with Letters in the Jade Dragon Box, by Gale Sears.


Here's the back cover  blurb:

Truth. In mainland China from 1949 to 1976, truth is all but eradicated, suppressed and supplanted by the iron will of Mao Tse-tung. Millions of people suffer untold anguish as their history, their culture, and their lives are brought under communist rule. Many flee to Taiwan and Hong Kong. 

As a child, Chen Wen-shan was taken from her family home in mainland China and sent to live with her great-uncle — a former general in the Nationalist Chinese army who had become one of the first converts to the LDS Church in Hong Kong. For ten years, Wen-shan has carried the sorrow of abandonment in her heart, with few memories of her life before. But at the death of Chairman Mao, fifteen-year-old Wen-shan receives a mysterious wooden box that holds a series of beautiful paintings and secret letters that reveal the fate of the family she has not heard from in more than a decade. 


Stop back in on Tuesday and I'll share a Tuesday Teaser with you from Letters in the Jade Dragon Box!