Paper Daughter

by Jeanette Ingold

Overview

Maggie Chen's journalist father has fired her imagination with the thrill of the newsroom, and when her father is killed, she is determined to keep his dreams alive by interning at the newspaper.

While assisting on her first story, Maggie learns that her father is suspected of illegal activity, and knows she must clear his name. Drawn to Seattle’s Chinatown, she discovers things that are far from what she expected: secrets, lies, and a connection to the Chinese Exclusion Era. Using all of her newspaper instincts and resources, Maggie is forced to confront her ethnicity—and a family she never knew.

This edition includes a guide for book group discussions and classroom use.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544104846
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/19/2013
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	HL800L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

JEANETTE INGOLD, the author of six young adult novels, has been writing since she worked as a reporter on a daily newspaper many years ago. Her novel Hitch was a Christopher Award winner. She lives in Missoula, Montana.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In the month after 16-year-old Maggie Chen’s father, a respected journalist, was killed in a hit-and-run accident, a basement flood destroys his notebooks...Ingold relies on some contrivance to link her plot strands, but the openended conclusion feels realistic and highlights Maggie’s elemental questions about how family history influences personal identity and how life moves forward after impossible loss."—Booklist

"Ingold (Hitch) weaves together two intersecting stories in this novel about identity and family...Though the historical chapters start slower, as Fai-yi's story builds, so does the tension and drama, especially his emotionally fraught relationship with his sister and star-crossed love...Ingold offers insight into the sacrifices and secrets involved in emigration from China during this period and their ripple effects."—Publishers Weekly

"This novel is a must read for those who love mysteries and family history."—VOYA

Editorial Reviews

"In the month after 16-year-old Maggie Chen’s father, a respected journalist, was killed in a hit-and-run accident, a basement flood destroys his notebooks...Ingold relies on some contrivance to link her plot strands, but the openended conclusion feels realistic and highlights Maggie’s elemental questions about how family history influences personal identity and how life moves forward after impossible loss."—Booklist

"Ingold (Hitch) weaves together two intersecting stories in this novel about identity and family...Though the historical chapters start slower, as Fai-yi's story builds, so does the tension and drama, especially his emotionally fraught relationship with his sister and star-crossed love...Ingold offers insight into the sacrifices and secrets involved in emigration from China during this period and their ripple effects."—Publishers Weekly

"This novel is a must read for those who love mysteries and family history."—VOYA
—

From the Publisher

Maggie Chen, 16, an intern at a Seattle newspaper who is grieving her journalist father's recent death, is shocked to discover that he fabricated his family history. A smart, ambitious journalist in the making, Maggie sets out to discover why he lied, what happened to his-and her-real family and a possible link between his death and the government corruption case her newspaper is investigating. Interwoven with Maggie's engaging narrative is the story of Chinese twins Fai-yi and Sucheng Li. In a flashback to 1932, Fai-yi recalls how they entered the United States using a "paper father," a ruse to circumvent draconian laws prohibiting Chinese immigration. As the narratives merge, however, readers learn that responsibility for decades of loss and family alienation lies not with those events-Chinese poverty prompting mass emigration, brutal immigration laws harshly applied-but with one irredeemably evil character. Because evil is ahistorical, a cause rather than an effect, this motivation trivializes the novel's context, rendering it largely irrelevant. Lacking ties to character motivation and choices, even the accurate historical detail rendered here is reduced to cultural wallpaper. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

Ingold (Hitch) weaves together two intersecting stories in this novel about identity and family. Most of the chapters are about likable 16-year-old Maggie Chen, who discovers that her recently deceased reporter father lied about his past; these are interspersed with the memories of Fai-yi Li, who immigrated to Seattle from China in 1932 at age 15 with his twin sister using falsified documents. As Maggie begins an internship at a newspaper, she uncovers a corruption story that may involve her father. “Why would my father, who'd always said a person was only as good as his or her word, have lied about his parents and about how he'd been brought up?” she wonders. Though the historical chapters start slower, as Fai-yi's story builds, so does the tension and drama, especially his emotionally fraught relationship with his sister and star-crossed love. The conclusion feels a bit anticlimactic, and in some cases the dialogue hits themes of identity rather hard. Still, Ingold offers insight into the sacrifices and secrets involved in emigration from China during this period and their ripple effects. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 7–10—The summer before her senior year, Maggie Chen begins her internship at a Seattle newspaper only weeks following the shocking death of her beloved reporter father. While sorting through his papers, she discovers that his heritage is not what she and her mother had always believed. At the Herald, Maggie finds herself unraveling a story involving murder and a local government scandal. However, she is taken off the story when leads suggest a connection to her father's death. Frantically, Maggie searches for clues to her father's past in order to clear his name. Raising questions about the nature of truth, Maggie struggles to understand the parent she thought she knew, and her own cultural heritage. Maggie's story is broken up by the 1930s voyage of Li Fai-yi, a Chinese teen who immigrates to America under a false identity to avoid the Chinese Exclusion Act. Ingold's picture of Seattle's early-20th-century Chinatown is haunting and convincing, offering a snapshot of the hardships of early American Chinese. Maggie is quiet and unassuming, but determined and intelligent. Still somber over her father's sudden death, she is fiercely proud of his accomplishments. This is a milder exploration of cultural identity than some other teen offerings, and is well documented. Ingold offers both a modern and historical look at the Chinese-American experience, but little else. Undeveloped side characters and overly successful genealogy research drag it down a bit.—Richelle Roth, Boone County Public Library, KY

School Library Journal