Books published by publisher New York: Putnam

""As compelling as Tan's first bestseller, The Joy Luck Club. . . No one writes about mothers and daughters with more empathy than Amy Tan." -The Philadelphia Inquirer "[An] absorbing tale of the mother-daughter bond . . . this book sing[s] with emotion and insight." -People Ruth Young and her widowed mother, LuLing, have always had a tumultuous relationship. Now, before she succumbs to forgetfulness, LuLing gives Ruth some of her writings, which reveal a side of LuLing that Ruth has never known. . . . In a remote mountain village where ghosts and tradition rule, LuLing grows up in the care of her mute Precious Auntie as the family endures a curse laid upon a relative known as the bonesetter. When headstrong LuLing rejects the marriage proposal of the coffinmaker, a shocking series of events are set in motion-all of which lead back to Ruth and LuLing in modern San Francisco. The truth that Ruth learns from her mother's past will forever change her perception of family, love, and forgiveness. "A strong novel, filled with idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters; haunting images; historical complexity; significant contemporary themes; and suspenseful mystery." -Los Angeles Times "For Tan, the true keeper of memory is language, and so the novel is layered with stories that have been written down-by mothers for their daughters, passing along secrets that cannot be said out loud but must not be forgotten." -The New York Times Book Review "Tan at her best . . . rich and hauntingly forlorn . . . The writing is so exacting and unique in its detail." -San Francisco Chronicle

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past-including the terible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events tha led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.