In the story, Lin Daiyu is orphaned and when, due to trickery, she witnesses her love marry another woman she dies, and her frequent visitations during times of difficulty become a reminder to the real Daiyu to be strong and not allow herself to be destroyed. Similar read to A Thousand Splendid Suns - if you enjoyed that you will quickly get engrossed in the heart-breaking tale. The inkstone asks for destruction before creation,’ Daiyu tells us, ‘ You must first destroy yourself, grind yourself into a paste, before becoming a work of art.

First Daiyu, then Feng, followed by Peony, and now Jacob Li working in the Old West in the mining town of Pierce, Idaho. Jenny Tinghui Zhang, did an outstanding job delivering this heart wrenching emotional - very personal historical novel. It’s one your emotions will force you to hold on to as Zhang’s poetic prose unravels a story of reclamation—even though there’s no justice, no closure, no happiness at the end.Before being sold to a madam who steps through a crowd of men “like wind cutting through hanging sheets,” Daiyu crouches among a collection of naked, frightened girls who remind her of visiting the fish market in Zhifu: “I and many others walked around each vendor, gazing hungrily at the fish, minds already racing forward to what it would taste like, how long it would take to scale, whether or not the meat was good, whether the eyeballs would pop in our mouths, how buttery the brain would taste, how soft the bones would be, soft enough to break between our teeth and leave in a wet pile on the table. and i am so grateful for JTZs father for wanting such a story, because i had no idea how much i wanted it, too. While the story could almost feel exploitative in lesser hands, Zhang’s writing never makes it feel that way.

With that background, the novel touches on kidnapping, sexual slavery, sexual assault, the loss of family, hiding identities, found family, and racism on all ends of the spectrum. It is here that the ‘timely’ historical fiction interspersed with Chinese mythology makes space for magical realism when Daiyu’s namesake appears as a ghost. Superbly and imaginatively written, the narrative follows a young Chinese woman in the late 1800s who is kidnapped and brought to the US. Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s debut novel Four Treasures of the Sky is a tragic and heartbreaking story that combines historical fact, fiction, Chinese folklore and magical realism. Lots of description about violence towards Chinese in the 19th century US without much context or some elaboration about the reasons.Jenny Tinghui Zhang is a fresh and necessary voice, with a powerful prose subverting the idea of novels of the Wild West and delivering a wonderful and dynamic heroine for us to follow and root for. Four Treasures of the sky gives a voice to those whose story has been taken away- rewritten and revised. She escapes but racism and discrimination by the white man follow her and the Chinese population across the west.