International best-selling author Lisa See has brought worldwide attention to little known aspects of Chinese culture through her enlightening and wondrous novels, which include Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, Shanghai Girls, Dreams of Joy, and China Dolls. Her emotional stories are renowned as much for their historical detail and accuracy as they are for their mesmerizing and achingly human characters.
In her 2017 novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, See brings readers to a remote, mountainous region of southwestern China where she explores the enduring connection between mothers and daughters. In their village, youthful protagonist Li-yan and her family have worked as tea farmers for centuries, but after Li-yan has a baby out of wedlock, she makes the life-altering decision to leave the newborn child on the steps of a far-flung city orphanage, all in a valiant effort to save her from a family tradition that would see the baby killed.
This infant girl is soon adopted by a California family and comes of age in a much more modern society than her mother’s, and yet the familial bonds pull at both of them in surprisingly similar ways. See’s latest novel proves to be another moving tale of powerful women living in a rapidly changing world.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane was recognized as an Amazon Best Book of the Month and a Barnes and Noble Best New Fiction recommendation. See will speak at the UW-Milwaukee Golda Meir Library as the featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Friends of the Library at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 19. Event co-sponsor Boswell Book Company will have copies of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane available for purchase.
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