From New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday and The Ways We Hide comes a story of one woman’s journey through Portland’s Chinatown and its infamous Shanghai tunnels, giving voice to those in the shadows in a spellbinding story of a young half-Chinese mother and her determination to forge a future for her daughter in a world that shuns outsiders.
Oregon, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of Portland’s Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens disoriented in a dank underground cell. Though no stranger to upholding a façade, being half Chinese yet passing as white during a time of rising hatred against Chinese immigrants in America, she’s perplexed by the male disguise she’s wearing. Of more pressing concern, however, are the dangers she faces as a crimped, or “Shanghaied,” sea bound to work as forced labor.
While struggling to recall the twisting path that led to her kidnapping—from serving as a maid for the family of a dubious mayor to delving into the shocking case of a goldminers’ massacre, ultimately luring her into the seedy dealings of those Shanghai Tunnels—she desperately tries to escape so she can return to her young daughter, left in danger in a place where unearthed secrets can prove even more deadly than the dark recesses of Chinatown.
