Last Boat out of Shanghai

 Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, 499 pgs. © 2019

Wow, what a book. I haven't really tapped into a whole lot of historical fiction but this book is of a very high academic caliber that really makes the time and place come alive. The author did extensive research and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with the survivors that she details here. The book chronicles four children from Shanghai as their lives and families are forever impacted by the Japanese military and later, communist China. Each short chapter is dedicated to one of the four main characters, so it's a good idea to make notes in order to keep everyone's journey separate in your mind--so much happens to these young people that it makes you angry and heartbroken. I spent a lot of extra time Googling things I'd heard names of but had no idea what they were about--the Rape of Nanking, the grotesque practice of foot-binding--there's so much to draw from this book through the lives of the characters that it can be overwhelming. Their stories are true lives lived, who are part of the Chinese diaspora trying to seek shelter from war and seize on whatever opportunities they can to survive. Some make it out of China and head for America, earning degrees and starting businesses, finding love and starting over in a time of intense hostility towards Asian people. At the end of the book, we learn that Bing, kept the secret of being sold to a rich family and adopted for 70 years, telling her daughter Helen, who then turned that into this amazing work. It's a stellar piece of history and journalism that reads like a piece of fiction but was very, very real. This work concluded the Yiddish Book Center's Stories of Exile discussion book club. Highly recommended for adults.