A River of Stars
Ratings4
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings4
Average rating4.3
"In a powerful debut novel about motherhood, immigration, and identity, a pregnant Chinese woman makes her way to California and stakes a claim to the American dream. Holed up with other moms-to-be in a secret maternity home in Los Angeles, Scarlett Chen is far from her native China, where she worked in a factory job and fell in love with the owner, Boss Yeung. Now she's carrying his baby. Already married with three daughters, he's overjoyed because the doctors confirmed he will finally have the son he has always wanted. To ensure that his son has every advantage, he has shipped Scarlett off to give birth on American soil. U.S. citizenship will open doors for their little prince. As Scarlett awaits the baby's arrival, she chokes down bitter medicinal stews and spars with her imperious housemates. The only one who fits in even less is Daisy, a spirited teenager and fellow unwed mother who is being kept apart from her American boyfriend. Then a new sonogram of Scarlett's baby reveals the unexpected. Panicked, she escapes by hijacking a van--only to discover that she has a stowaway: Daisy, who intends to track down the father of her child. They flee to San Francisco's bustling Chinatown, where Scarlett will join countless immigrants desperately trying to seize their piece of the American dream. What Scarlett doesn't know is that her baby's father is not far behind her. --
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I've said many times I don't tend to like contemporary fiction, but for all that, I've been reading a decent amount of it. And liking some of it. In trying to read inclusively, I've come across books like this one and Number One Chinese Restaurant. Both books were on my summer TBR/beach read list, but having read them, I'm not sure I'd classify them as such. They are both quite good, though!
Scarlett falls in love and gets pregnant by her boss, the owner of the factory she works in, and he sends her to the US to give birth so their son will have citizenship. Which is a little shady, but I can totally believe it's done among wealthier families. She's one of only two unwed mothers at the secret maternity home in LA - the rest are wealthy wives there to get the same benefits for their children. When one woman goes into labor unexpectedly, Scarlett turns out to be one of the few people in the home that know how to drive, and is charged with driving the laboring mother to the hospital. After dropping her and the head of the house off, she simply drives away in the van.
Her first stop is McDonald's, which is quite believable, from what I understand. (I've never been pregnant myself, but I've seen the cravings of my friends!) On her way back to the van from the restaurant, she finds Daisy, the other unwed mom-to-be, getting out of the van. The two women make peace with each other and wind up heading for San Francisco, where they get an apartment in Chinatown.
In Chinatown, they dodge private investigators, scratch together rent money for the tiny room they share, and take care of each other through delivery and raising their newborns. Daisy was born in the US, but Scarlett lives in fear of being deported.
The book is a fascinating look at the perils immigrants face, and especially immigrant women, who don't always move of their own free will but then have to make the most of their situations while taking care of children and loved ones.
The ending seemed a little too...neat. I actually liked the way things were going before the last couple of chapters, even if the way it ends is a happier ending for the two women. I still enjoyed it, but I think it would have been more interesting to end the book in a slightly different way. That's about all I can say without spoiling things!
You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.
A perfectly implausible plot but sometimes that's what fiction does best - it winds characters through complicated and unlikely scenarios to a final outcome. At first I thought Scarlett seemed a bit wooden but I found myself really loving all of the characters by the end.
