The Fortunes

by Peter Ho Davies Narrated by James Chen

Overview

A New York Times Editors' Choice

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016

“Davies writes with a rare emotional resonance and a deft sense of structure; it's hard not to be in awe of the way he's composed this complex, beautiful novel . . . Stunning.” -NPR

“Davies [is] a master storyteller.” -Entertainment Weekly

Sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts American history through the lives of Chinese Americans and reimagines the multigenerational novel through the fractures of immigrant family experience.

Inhabiting four lives-a railroad baron's valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption-this novel captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive-as much through love as blood.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 06/20/2016
Though billed as a novel, The Fortunes could more aptly be described as a collection of four novellas, each of which explores a different facet of Chinese-American experience. The first section, “Gold,” is set during the mid-19th century and follows Ling, an orphan, from his childhood on Pearl River in China to Gold Mountain, Calif., where he works first in a laundry and then as a valet before becoming an unlikely organizer of Chinese workers building the Central Pacific Railway. In “Silver,” Davies imagines the lonely inner life of 1930s actress Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Chinese-American star, who has affairs with many leading men but never marries any of them. “Jade” takes place in the 1980s, against the backdrop of the dying American auto industry, and focuses on the mistaken identity of a Chinese-American man taken to be Japanese in a deadly strip club brawl. In “Pearl,” the final section, a present-day middle-aged American writer, whose mother was from China, now finds himself there for the first time to adopt a baby girl with his Caucasian wife. The book’s scope is impressive, but what’s even more staggering is the utter intimacy and honesty of each character’s introspection. More extraordinary still is the depth and the texture created by the juxtaposition of different eras, making for a story not just of any one person but of hundreds of years and tens of millions of people. Davies (The Welsh Girl) has created a brilliant, absorbing masterpiece. Agent: Maria Massie, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Winner of the 2017 Chautauqua Prize Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize A New York Times Notable Book  A New York Times Editors' Choice Longlisted for The Story Prize One of NPR's "Best Books of 2016" A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016 One of BookRiot's "100 Must-Read Books of U.S. Historical Fiction" Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature—Honor Selection An Indie Next Pick (September 2016) "Davies, a master storyteller, blends fact with fiction in this saga of immigration, acclimation, and Chinese culture, which he tells through the experiences of Chinese-Americans at different points in history."—Entertainment Weekly, "12 must-read novels out this fall" “Davies writes with a rare emotional resonance and a deft sense of structure; it's hard not to be in awe of the way he's composed this complex, beautiful novel. The Fortunes is a stunning look at what it means to be Chinese, what it means to be American, and what it means to be a person navigating the strands of identity, the things that made us who we are, whoever that is.”—NPR "[A] rewarding, unorthodox novel."—Wall Street Journal “Intense and dreamlike . . . filled with quiet resonances across time . . . The Fortunes is powerful as a chronicle of perpetual frustration, as each new generation grows aware of the arbitrary line between margin and mainstream . . . What makes The Fortunes so hopeful, the type of novel that could have only been written now, is its willingness to take liberties with that past—to rearrange its details and indulge in speculation, in order to help us imagine a different way forward.”—The New Yorker "In naming the given scripts of culture, as well as pushing against them, Davies’ characters struggle to belong — not only to race or to history or to stories, but also simply to themselves. And Davies, ever deft, points us into the messy complexity of identity with compassion and nuance, urging us each on toward spaces where we honor and move more freely within what he calls our 'uncertain and contradictory' selves." — San Francisco Chronicle "I was very thankful for Peter Ho Davies’ panoramic novel The Fortunes, a moving, often funny, and deeply provocative novel about the lives of four very different Chinese Americans as they encounter the myriad opportunities and clear limits of American life. An essential tale gorgeously told."—Chang-rae Lee, Buzzfeed, "22 Famous Writers Told Us About The Book They're Most Thankful For" “A prophetic work, with passages of surpassing beauty...The Fortunes is a boldly imagined work of fiction in which historic figures come to an astonishingly vivid, visceral life through the power of Peter Ho Davies’s prose.”—Joyce Carol Oates, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards citation "The Fortunes masterfully captures a century of history and the survival of an immigrant community caught between two cultures."—Buzzfeed, "21 Incredible New Books You Need To Read This Fall" "Davies distills 150 years of Chinese-American history in his timely and eloquent new novel. In Gold, the first of its four sections, Ah Ling, 14, the son of a Hong Kong prostitute, seeks his fortune in California. He works as valet to Charles Crocker, who hires thousands of Chin —

Library Journal - Audio

★ 02/15/2017
Davies (The Welsh Girl) deftly weaves together four stories of the Chinese American experience to create a rich tapestry of what it takes to find acceptance with oneself and in one's country. A 19th-century laundry worker, a Chinese film star, a friend of someone killed in a hate crime, and a half-Chinese man looking to adopt a Chinese baby tell their stories of life in America and how their "Chinese-ness" has helped define their American existence. Although uniquely different, the characters are uniquely the same: racism, questions of identity, the need for acceptance, and the need to be "all-American" surface in all of them. Raw, witty, honest, and unflinching, The Fortunes manages to capture the heart of growing up Chinese American. Impressively narrated by the talented James Chen, who brings an authenticity to the story with his numerous accents and reserved yet powerful telling. VERDICT In this emotionally gripping novel, Davies proves that he's a masterful writer. ["A thought-provoking literary work": LJ 8/16 review of the Houghton Harcourt hc.]—Erin Cataldi, Johnson Cty. P.L., Franklin, IN

Library Journal

08/01/2016
Davies (The Welsh Girl) opens this novel on the Chinese American experience with "Gold," taking readers back to California's infamous Gold Rush as the Eurasian Ling struggles to make a living in a stereotypical laundry/brothel and falls in love with one of the women there. "Silver" focuses on the silver screen and the career of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star. Things turn darker in "Jade," featuring the brutal death of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man murdered in 1982 by disgruntled auto plant workers who mistake him as Japanese. In the final piece, "Pearl," a half-Chinese American writer and his Irish American wife set off to China in hopes of adopting a little girl. While there, John Ling Smith reflects upon his heritage while facing his own concerns about assimilation and discrimination for himself and for his family. VERDICT The absence of a contiguous story line may initially alarm, but patient readers will discover how cleverly Davies interweaves fact and fiction to pull the novel together and show how far Chinese Americans have progressed—and how great the journey ahead is. A thought-provoking literary work for individuals interested in the Asian American experience. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/16, as Tell It Slant.]—Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

SEPTEMBER 2016 - AudioFile

Narrating this novel about the Chinese-American experience, James Chen delivers the characters’ personalities without falling into caricature. His success is especially evident in his respectful rendering of the Pidgin English used by Chinese immigrants in four significant time periods, starting with the building of our nation’s first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. Besides focusing on immigration issues and prejudice in early Hollywood and 1980s Detroit, the story dramatizes first-generation Chinese-Americans' conflicting desires: meeting their filial duties versus assimilating into Western culture. Chen's understated portrayals help listeners understand that, although circumstances have clearly changed since the mid-1800s, Chinese-American concerns, even in the 21st century, have remained unexpectedly constant. The audiobook provides an interesting perspective on the current immigration debate in America. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-06-22
A four-part suite of astute, lyrical, and often poignant stories poses incisive questions about what changes—and what does not—when people from another culture become Americans.You could, if you wished, refer to this blend of historically inspired narratives as The Birth of a Chinese-American Nation, as Davies (The Welsh Girl, 2007, etc.) encompasses whole eras of history, transition, and even consciousness in the four stories that make up this novel. The first, set in the mid-19th century, focuses on Ling, whose fastidious and imperturbably dogged performance as manservant to rail magnate Charles Crocker inspires "Mister Charley" to consider hiring a vast workforce of Chinese immigrants to help lay down tracks for the first transcontinental railroad. ("A model of industry," Crocker says of Ling to a pair of Siamese twins. "Were it not for his shining example, we…should never have thought to hire so many thousands of your countrymen.") The second story belongs to Anna May Wong, the glamorous, mordantly witty movie star, as she makes her only visit across the Pacific to her family's Chinese homeland in the mid-1930s after losing the coveted lead role in the movie version of The Good Earth to Luise Rainer. The book becomes more impassioned in the third section, which uses the fatal 1982 beating of Vincent Chin near Detroit by an autoworker and his stepson who had mistaken him for Japanese as an inquiry into the nature of racism itself. The last story, set close to the present day, is about a biracial Chinese-American author named John who sets off with his wife, Nola, for mainland China for the purpose of adopting a child—which gently but resolutely brings this neatly woven portrait full circle. Davies' nuanced contemplation of how America has affected the Chinese (and vice versa) forces the reader to confront what is both singular and similar about all cross-cultural transactions.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173805911
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I: GOLD

Celestial Railroad

Beset by labor shortages, Crocker chanced one morn to remark his houseboy, a slight but perdurable youth named Ah Ling. And it came to him that herein lay his answer.
​— ​American Titan, K. Clifford Stanton

1.
It was like riding in a treasure chest, Ling thought. Or one of the mistress’s velvet jewel cases. The glinting brasswork, the twinkling, tinkling chandelier dangling like a teardrop from the inlaid walnut ceiling, the etched glass and flocked wallpaper and pendulous silk. And the jewel at the center of the box ​— ​Charles Crocker, Esquire, Mister Charley, biggest of the Big Four barons of the Central Pacific Railroad, resting on the plump brocaded upholstery, massive as a Buddha, snoring in time to the panting, puffing engine hauling them uphill.
        It was more than a year since the end of the war and the shooting of the president ​— ​the skinny one, with the whiskery, wizened face of a wise ape ​— ​who had first decreed the overland railroad. His body had been carried home in a palace car much like this, Ling had heard Crocker boast. Ling pictured one long thin box laid inside another, the dead man’s tall black hat perched atop it like a funnel. People had lined the tracks, bareheaded even in the rain, it was said, torches held aloft in the night. Like joss sticks, he reflected.
        For a moment he fancied Crocker dead, the carriage swagged in black, and himself keeping vigil beside the body, but it was impossible with the snores alternately sighing and stuttering from the prone form. “Locomotion is a soporific to me,” Crocker had confessed dryly as they boarded, and sure enough, his eyes had grown heavy before they reached Roseville. By the time the track began to rise at Auburn, the low white haze of the flats giving way to a receding blue, vegetal humidity to mineral chill, his huge head had begun to roll and bob, and he’d presently stretched himself out, as if to stop it crashing to the floor. Yet even asleep Crocker seemed inexorable, his chest surging and settling profoundly as an ocean swell, the watch chain draped across it so weighty it must have an anchor at one end. Carried to the Sierra summit, he looked set to rumble down the lee side into Nevada and Utah, bowling across the plains, sweeping all before him.
        Ling knew he should be looking out the window, taking the chance to see the country, to see if the mountains really were gold, but he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off the steep slope of his master’s girth. My gold mountain, he thought, entertaining a fleeting vision of himself ​— ​tiny ​— ​scaling Crocker’s imposing bulk, pickaxe in hand, following the glittering vein of his watch chain toward the snug cave of his vest pocket.
        Ling didn’t own a watch himself, of course, but shortly after he entered service Crocker had had him outfitted with a new suit from his dry goods store, picking it out himself. The storekeep had been peddling a more modest rig ​— ​“a fustian bargain, as it were!” ​— ​that the big man dismissed out of hand as shoddy. He settled on a brown plaid walking suit instead, waving aside the aproned clerk to yank the coat sharp over Ling’s narrow shoulders. “There now!” Crocker declared, beaming at him in the glass. “Every inch a gentleman’s valet.” He taught Ling how to fasten only the top button of the jacket, leaving the rest undone, to “show the vest to advantage,” and advised him he needn’t bother with a necktie so long as he buttoned his shirt collar. “Clothes make the man,” the circling clerk opined, sucking his teeth. “Even a Chinaman.” And then, of course, there must be a hat, a tall derby, which Ling balanced like a crown, eyes upturned. As a finishing touch Crocker had tucked a gold coin, a half eagle, into Ling’s vest pocket ​— ​a gift, though the cost of the outfit itself would come out of his wages ​— ​where Ling could swear the thing actually seemed to tick against his ribs like a heartbeat: rich, rich, rich.
        He patted it now, as he finally turned to take in the scenery ​— ​the pale halo of sere grass along a ridge, the stiff flame of a cypress, the veiled peaks beyond ​— ​wondering despite himself if the mountains might glister through the flickering pines.

2.
Gold Mountain. Gum Shan. Ling had never even laid eyes on gold before he left Fragrant Harbor. It had made him feel furtively foolish. There he was, sent to find it and he’d never seen it in his life. What if he didn’t recognize it? How yellow was it? How heavy? What if he walked right by it? “How can you miss it, lah!” Aunty Bao had snapped, over the snick of her abacus. “There’ll be a mountain of it, stupid egg!” But Ling wasn’t so sure. They came from Pearl River. If it were really full of pearls, he wanted to tell her, he wouldn’t be sailing to Gold Mountain.
        “Besides,” Big Uncle insisted, “you have seen gold before.” They were in his cabin on the “flower boat,” the moored junk that housed the brothel Big Uncle owned and Aunty Bao ​— ​palely plump as the pork buns she was named after ​— ​managed for him. Yes, Big Uncle was saying, a grandfather had made his fortune prospecting in Nanyang. The old man had had a mouthful of gold teeth. As an infant, Ling had even been given gold tea, a concoction made by pouring boiling water over a piece of gold, supposed to ensure luck. Didn’t he remember? Ling tried. For a second a vast, bared smile, glistening wetly, rose up before him and with it a feeling of fear, an impression, as the lips drew back, that beneath the flesh the man himself was made all of gold, that behind the gold teeth lay a gold tongue clanging in a gold throat. But the only “grandfather” he could actually recall was a broken-down old head swabbing the decks who had already lost those teeth, pulled, one by one, to pay for his opium habit. All that was left was a fleshy hole, the old man’s lips hanging loose as an ox’s, his tongue constantly licking his bruised-looking gums.
        Still, Big Uncle pressed, “Gold is in your blood, boy!”
        Perhaps, Ling thought, but he’d learned to doubt his blood.
        His people were of that reviled tribe of sea gypsies known as Tanka, “egg folk,” after the rounded rattan shelters of their sampans. Forbidden by imperial edict to live on land and only grudgingly tolerated in ports and coastal villages, for generations they’d made a thin living as fishermen, mocked for their stink by the Han Chinese. Latterly they’d made an even more odious, if also more lucrative, reputation smuggling opium for the British and pimping out their women to them for good measure. Ling’s mother had been one of these haam-sui-mui, or “saltwater girls.” “A lucky one,” Aunty Bao observed with a moue of envy, a beauty plucked from the brothel by a wealthy foreigner and established in her own household. Only his mother’s luck had run out fast. She’d died in childbirth, and her protector, Ling’s father, had settled a generous sum on Big Uncle to take the infant off his hands. All Ling had left of her was her name. He had grown up on board the flower boat along with the other bastards, a clutch of them grudgingly provided for until they could be disposed of profitably, the girls as whores, the boys as coolies (a C or P daubed on their chests in pitch for Cuba or Peru, where they’d labor in the sugar plantations or mine guano).
        The only children Big Uncle kept were his lawful sons by Aunty Bao. Their father styled himself a respectable Chinese comprador ​— ​frogged brocade jacket over ankle-length changshan, silk cap smoothed tight over shaven head ​— ​grooming his boys to run the family business, even if that business consisted of a brothel, an opium den, a smuggling fleet. Big Uncle’s sons were plump and well dressed ​— ​on land they could pass for Cantonese ​— ​but more than anything Ling envied them their father’s name.
 
 

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