"Daughters of Shandong" surprised me. With it being the first book ever written by the author, Eve Chung, my expectations were low. However, the book was very hard to put down; I found myself staying up late into the night to finish it.

The book opens on a land-owning family, the Angs, in China during the Communist revolution, and is based on the life of Chung's grandmother. The father and paternal grandparents in the family flee to Taiwan, leaving behind the women and children. Hai, the oldest of the all-female children, suffers the most at the hands of the Communists in retribution for her father's societal privilege. The story is written in simple prose, but the narration is very compelling, and the reader feels like they are immersed in the tense, desperate climate of the time. The characters are well-shaped, and for those who aren't familiar with the history in China at the time (like myself), the author provides adequate background information. I highly recommend this book.

This book starts in 1948 as the Communists fight the Nationalists in China. The description of the brutality is amazing. The suffering of the Chinese landowners and their families is described in detail. Also amazing is the way the Chinese feel about girls and women as being worthless even as they are the vessels that carry and take care of the sons that they worship. The saving grace is the vision of the next generation of women who use their strength, brains and common sense to realize their way of life needs to change. By educating themselves they can change the lifestyle of their daughters and their daughters to make the world a better place. The mother-in-laws power and evilness in the family is unbelievable. I found this book to be very difficult to read and felt very angry but hopeful at the end.

This debut novel is a champion work of historical fiction. Based on true events in Eve Chung's family background the story of the Mao takeover of mainland China comes to life through Ms. Chung's writing. This is a period of history that is important for all to know the details of but is not well covered in Western education. I am pleased that Ms. Chung has brought this period of Chinese history to us in a very readable novel format. The characters are engaging and quickly draw you in to the story. You are going to cheer for these neglected and abused girls as they adjust to the peasant refugee life with their mother. Their survival depends on their wits and perseverance which they demonstrate at every turn in the story. The plight of the peasant class in China during Mao's takeover is so illustrative of other parts of the world where a dictator reigns and the rights of women are challenged. These women are all heroes in this story and will long remain in my memory.

This is a fictional autobiography of a woman born into a wealthy Confucian family, pre-World War II. The focus is the religious, cultural and economic structure of China in 1948 that was completely and often cruelly changed as Communism overwhelmed mainland Imperial China. The story spans the most cataclysmic change China has seen, at least in modern times. The story is well told and an important rendition of Confucian cultural enslavement and denigration of women and the poor. It does much to explain why the promise of Communism was welcomed by the starving masses. It doesn't address whether or how well that promise was fulfilled. Other novels about this time period reflect the same horrendous conditions imposed on the landless and the debilitating cultural attitude toward women, however this book goes far to explain the religious basis for and enforcement of the rules of behavior and how they were finally destroyed. The primary female characters were resilient and brave. Their story is well told and shared by perhaps millions. This story provides valuable insight to Westerners unfamiliar with Chinese Confucian culture and therefore is a good bookclub choice.

This book dealt with a moment in time I hadn't read - or even thought - about very much, the fall of the Nationalists and the rise of the Communists and the immediate aftermath. The juxtaposition with the Chinese cultural preference for sons and the treatment of daughters and wives was interesting. The writing often took me out of the book, unfortunately.