I absolutely loved this story! I was so connected to this family and felt like I was with them every step of their journey. As hard as it was to read of the atrocities that happened in China, I couldn't put it down. Daughters of Shandong is a book about a mother's love and the struggles she goes through to secure her daughters' futures. Excellent job Eve J. Chung! I hope to read more of your work in the future.

Daughters of Shandong is a well written debut novel about a mother and her three daughters during the Communist Revolution, based on Chung’s own family. Chung does an excellent job of putting you in the time and place.
Hai is the eldest child of the Ang family, wealthy farming landlords. But as a daughter, she is worthless. When the Communist revolutionaries come to Shandong, her father, grandmother and the rest of the family flee, leaving Hai, her mother and two younger sisters to “guard” the family home. Only because of their mother’s kindness to the workers are they spared by the Cadres. Soon, it becomes obvious they must flee the area.
The reader is witness to the lawlessness of the revolution. Most landowners are killed. In the cities, poverty is everywhere and brutality reigns. Later, when the family makes it to Hong Kong, there are overwhelmed refuge centers. It’s not until they finally make it to Taiwan that they have a chance to do more than merely survive.
Chung uses the second daughter Di as a contrast to obedient Hai. In the beginning, Di is selfish and headstrong. But most importantly she adapts. But as the book progresses, we witness the switch between the two daughters and which flourishes.
I enjoyed learning about this period of time and the book was obviously well researched. There was a constant contest of wills between the two sisters, with the overriding theme of maternal love and sacrifice. But most importantly, the book highlights the Chinese tradition of belittling women. As Chung writes in her Author’s Note, “ Sexism was, and still is, so ingrained in our culture that many women consider it part of fate.”
My thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for an advance copy of this book.

Well written and historically based highlighting experiences and viewpoints of generations of women during a difficult period in China.

This is an extraordinary story of perseverance. It takes place in China starting with the Chinese revolution. A family man abandons his wife and daughters to flee the communists with his mother and other male relatives. The mom finds a way to survive with her daughters under harrowing conditions. Eventually they must also flee to Taiwan to try to find a better life. Mom is resourceful, hardworking and will do anything to keep her daughters alive and safe. They fight the Chinese tradition that only sons matter. The story is propulsive. This is a beautiful debut novel that is a tribute to the author’s grandmother. I highly recommend it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkeley for the advanced reader copy!

Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung is an amazing historical fiction that I really enjoyed.

This is such a stunning novel that introduces me to a whole new world. I usually do not delve into novels that include China, but ai sure am glad I did with this one.

Ms. Chung really brought out every emotion from within as she crafts a story of pain, heartbreak, loss, fear, and abandonment. What also shines are the characters themselves, strong women that have forged bonds and have determination, heart, courage, and tenacity despite all of the cultural, political, and familial obstacles and battles. What we are left with is a story of hope and promise despite all of the difficulties that these women were handed during the civil war within China during the 20th century.

5/5 stars

Thank you NG and Berkley Publishing for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 5/7/24.

I enjoyed this story of a girl becoming a woman in China during the revolution. It was a tough read at time but certainly worthy and well told incorporating history through a compelling story. It also highlights the the difference between the ways in which males and females were (are) treated in China.

Eve Chung has written a powerful historical fiction account of the Chinese Civil War. Hai, the eldest daughter of a landowner father, her sisters, and her mother are abandoned behind by their family (because they are women- they are considered worthless) as their father and the rest of his family flee to Taiwan. When the Communists arrive and find the Ang family has left- the mother and daughters are mistreated and punished. They end up escaping and through many hardships and years past, Hai, Di, and Mom find their way back to the Ang family in Taiwan. It is a fascinating story of the resourcefulness and strength of women in a time when women were considered second-class. Thank you, NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for an advanced reading copy. My opinions are my own.

This is one of those addictive read books that you have to stop everything to read and find out what happens next. I breathed in this book from the moment I started it because it was so powerful right from the start. Chung weaves a wonderful, heart-wrenching story that will satisfy those who are looking for the next best historical fiction book. I will be absolutely recommending this often and whenever I can.

Daughters of Shandong shed light on a piece of history and perspectives that we are so rarely shown. I loved learning about this history through the eyes of the women and girls that Chung crafted.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I have to say, that I delighted in reading this novel in one day. Set in the countryside of 1948 China, the Ang family are wealthy land owners, The mother is daily abused by her mother in law for failing to produce a male heir. There are three living daughters. Di is head strong, independent, and rises up against traditional Chinese familial cultural traditions. Hai is the oldest and a caretaker for her sisters and beacon of support for her mother. As the communists army approaches, the Ang family leaves the girls and their mother since they are useless mouths to feed. The Ang women embark on a journey of homelessness and starvation to reunite with their family. This novel is beautifully written and the themes of resilience, bonds between mother and daughters, and breaking free of tradition, are so beautifully developed that you feel like you have made the journey as well.

Daughters of Shandong is an immersive experience into the Communist Revolution in China beginning in 1948. I found myself reading deep into the night with tears rolling down my cheeks as Hai, her mother, and sisters struggled to survive the journey to Taiwan in order to be reunited with their family. They were deliberately left behind while the rest of the family escaped. After all, according to the family matriarch, they were females - just extra mouths to feed. The four females struggled for two years to reach their destination.

Based on the author’s grandmother’s story, this unique book reaches deep into the soul. It is an unforgettable story that I will be purchasing for my high school library and recommending to my historical fiction loving friends.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Daughters of Shandong emphasizes the importance of belief of strict adherence to family customs as seen in the culture of a people. Hai along with her mother and sisters are punished and neglected because they are female. Amidst war and family turbulence they try to survive in conditions that are intolerable and so unnecessary. This book is an eye-opener to the travesty of abandonment and discrimination because of gender and one I recommend everyone read.

In 1948, the Communist Army is closing in on Shandong. The wealthy Ang family flees, leaving behind Hai, her mother, and her three sisters, whose only crime is being women. Even the girls' father abandons them. The hard life lived by Hai's mother is difficult to read about, as she is mocked, abused, and tortured by her mother-in-law for the crime of not producing a male heir. Left to fend for themselves, the abandoned women begin a journey back to the family that cast them aside. It is a sad, heart-breaking true story.

The situation of Hai's mother is so powerfully written, as she is abused so often that it appears she cannot overcome it. The story is well told and the characters will touch your heart.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

Daughters of Shandong follows the eldest daughter of the wealthy Ang family as the Chinese Civil War slowly ravages China. Author Eve Chung does a beautiful job illustrating the struggles of women in China during this time, how abandonment and war truly affect those without power, and the fight of the individual and family to adapt and grow through all the doubt, fear, and pain when you no longer recognize the world in which you live.

This was truly a wonderful book that I struggled to put down! The three principal characters are well-developed, unique, and intriguing to follow on this harrowing flight from the Chinese communist regime. Hai, the main character, is a wonderful snapshot into the mind of a young woman growing up during this time. Through her, we get to see the way a culture can change in just one generation through the perseverance and hope of its (young) people.

I was especially intrigued by the way Ms. Chung shows the generational divide in the mindset of the Ang women - from the grandmother to the mother and her daughters, it is an interesting look at how women are shaped by society, their upbringing, and the strength of their own will. Whenever all three of these generations were together on the page, the tension was almost unbearable!

The author also manages to showcase the horrifying position of women during this time without condemning "men" or "society" as a whole by showing both the good and bad side of each both sex. She merely presents the (seemingly obvious) conclusion that women shouldn't be treated as second-class humans who only exist to produce male children.

While at times a difficult read because of the horrifying subject matter and the author's ability to bring it to life, it is truly a well-written and well-researched book. I will definitely be suggesting it to my friends and family!

Do you ever finish a book and just sit there overwhelmed with gratitude to the author for writing it? That was me after finishing Daughters of Shandong, a debut historical fiction novel inspired by the story of the author's own grandmother and her harrowing escape to Taiwan during the communist revolution.

Narrator Hai is the eldest of four daughters, witnessing her mother suffer abuse for her failure to produce a male heir. As the communist army approaches their town, the rest of their wealthy family flees, leaving mother and daughters behind. With no males left at home, Hai is put on trial and tortured for her family's perceived crimes. Mother and daughters realize they must flee to survive; they forge travel permits and set off on a thousand mile journey in hopes of finding the family that abandoned them.

This is such a beautifully crafted tale of survival amid the trauma of being refugees and the ever-present sexism of 1948 China. The characters are drawn so sharply; I found myself unable to put the book down in hopes of them reaching a place of safety. The resiliency and strength of the characters was so inspiring and moving. I loved how the author presented education as the most valuable asset a girl could have to achieve a place of security and freedom; it gave such an overwhelming feeling of hope.

Thank you so much to Berkley and Netgalley for this book to review.

Eve Chung's "Daughters of Shandong" is a poignant and emotionally charged historical fiction novel that weaves a captivating story set against the backdrop of one of China's most turbulent periods - the Communist revolution.
The story follows the plight of Hai, her mother and sisters as they are left behind when the rest of the family flees Mainland China. The women are left penniless and made to pay for crimes the rest of their family committed according to the Communists. What follows is their story of courage and survival as they navigate their way across China to Taiwan.
Chung's prose is evocative and vivid, painting a rich tapestry of the women’s experiences against the tumultuous historical events of the time. The characters are beautifully crafted, and their development throughout the story is a testament to Chung's skill as a storyteller. The author's attention to detail and her ability to convey the emotional weight of the characters' decisions and struggles are commendable. The novel is particularly effective in shedding light on the roles of women in a society undergoing rapid change and the sacrifices they made for their families and their principles.
Make sure you read the Author’s note at the end. The fact that this story is based on the actual experiences of the author’s grandmother and great-grandmother makes this novel that much more compelling.
Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

As civil war closes in on Shandong, the wealthy Ang family worries more about their lack of heirs. Hai is the eldest of four girls and stays with her mother when the family flees the communist army moving in.

This may be my first novel of 2024, but I will be thinking of it for a while. It was very entertaining and hard to put down. I loved the main character and how she grew with her struggles. It exemplified the embedded sexism in ancient Chinese culture that stuck with tradition as times went on, as well as the trauma from war. I learned about the growth of communism in mainland China as well.

“Our world was broken by the war, but perhaps that meant that we could piece it together in a different way.”

Daughters of Shandong comes out 5/7.

Many do not understand the atrocities that occurred as Mao Zedong came into power and created the People's
Republic of China. Eve J. Chung introduces 3 generations of the Ang family with many cultural insights. Cursed with daughters and no sons, a mother and her 3 daughters are left behind as Mao's cadres approach Shandong and the husband and grandparents escape to safer territories This novel is a powerful story of a mother's enduring love and the resilience of women under horrific circumstances. A thought provoking story as we consider the role these events have had on the creation of China today.

I received an ARC of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book took me a really long time to plow through. It wasn't hard to get into. The writing is good. It's educational, interesting, entertaining, and moving. But it's also hard. As a white woman in the United States I've dealt with discrimination. But in my life and situation it was pretty much irrelevant. None of that discrimination actually prevented me from doing and being who I wanted. Partly because my personal passions and dreams lined up nicely with traditional American ideals about women. I had, of course, heard about the plight of women in China. But wow. This book makes it personal. I really wanted to quit reading it a few times. I was so angry on behalf of Hai and her family. The kind of anger that is so consuming that you don't want to feel it at all. But I couldn't stop reading it. I read it for Hai, and for the author's grandmother and great-grandmother. I read it for every female who has ever been taught that they were less valuable than their make counterparts. I wanted them to be seen, if only by me.

This incredible debut by Taiwanese-American lawyer Eve J. Chung doesn’t come out until May 2024, but I was able to get an advance copy and boy am I glad I did. Inspired by her family’s history, Chung weaves the fictional story of Li-Hai, the eldest of four daughters from the Ang family, wealthy landowners in the small rural town of Zhucheng in Shandong, China. The year is 1948 and even though World War II has officially ended, China is caught up in its own civil war between the current ruling party, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists led by Mao Zedong. In a country still steeped in the Confucian ideal of “zhong nan qing nu” (“value men, belittle women”), Hai’s mother Chiang-Yue is treated worse than a servant in the Ang household due to her inability to produce a male heir (to say that Yue is “mistreated” is an understatement — in addition to suffering constant physical and verbal abuse at the hands of her mother-in-law, her husband also neglects her and never speaks up for her). In the eyes of the Ang elders, Hai and her sisters, being daughters, are considered “disappointments” and “useless mouths to feed” (their grandmother Nai Nai has no qualms about telling them to their faces that they are better off dead so the family doesn’t have to waste money on them anymore) — which is why, when the Communist army invades the town and the family is forced to flee, they decide to leave mother and daughters behind. Abandoned and left to fend for themselves, Yue and her daughters become destitute and penniless after the Communists seize their home and kick them out. Worse yet, in the absence of any Ang family males, Hai, as the eldest daughter at 13 years old, is chosen to answer for her father’s and grandfather’s “crimes” and is subsequently tortured to near death. With the help of former workers whom Yue had always treated kindly, mother and daughters escape to the city of Qingdao, where they hoped to reunited with the rest of the family. They survive the arduous journey to Qingdao, only to find out that the family actually relocated to Taiwan (where Chiang Kai-shek re-established the Nationalist base after fleeing China). Abandoned once again, the Ang women figure out a way to overcome the many obstacles they face, including enduring a thousand mile journey to Hong Kong and eventually finding their family in Taiwan.

The story is narrated in the first person from Hai’s perspective, which was the perfect narrative structure in this case because it made the experience more immersive and personal. In her Author’s Note (which is not to be missed), Chung explains the inspiration for the story, which was originally going to be a biography of sorts about her maternal grandmother, whom she had stayed with in Taiwan as a child. But after her grandmother died, she realized there were too many gaps in her grandmother’s life that she knew nothing about and regrettably had never asked, so she pivoted to turning the family history she was planning to write into a fictional story using the notes and interviews that she and her mother had already gathered. Basing the character of Hai on her maternal grandmother, Chung was able to fill in the gaps of her own family history, but more than that, for us readers, she delivered a beautifully-written story about a family of women who survive devastating heartbreak and hardship to resiliently rise above the entrenched cultural norms that bind them to inferiority within their society.

As a Chinese daughter myself, I resonated deeply with Hai and many of the struggles she went through in trying to reconcile her identity with her culture. While I didn’t share all of the experiences she went through, I did grow up under the same Chinese culture, so I was familiar with many of the antiquated traditions as well as the historical context in the story. Even with this familiarity, I have to admit that many of the scenes involving Hai’s POS (pardon my French) father and grandmother and their horrible treatment of the mothers and daughters in the family were hard to read. With that said though, this is actually where Chung’s story stands out from many of the other historical novels that revolve around Chinese culture and tradition — I appreciated the way that she succinctly and clearly lays out the facts of how women were treated during that time without mincing words. More than any other novel I’ve read in recent years (specifically ones written in contemporary times), this one does a great job exploring the internal battle that many of the women who grow up in these restrictive cultures face — despite understanding the injustices they suffer, they’ve internalized what they‘ve been taught to the extent that it not only becomes a “normal” part of who they are, they also oftentimes end up perpetuating these same injustices (whether intentionally or unintentionally) onto future generations. To this point, there were many thought-provoking quotes throughout the book (which I of course marked up), but the following excerpt stood out to me the most. In this scene, Hai (as an adult now) gets into an argument with her mother, who finally, after many years, gives birth to a son, Ming, to carry on the Ang family name (though ironically, this doesn’t alleviate the poor treatment that the mother continues to endure because the mother-in-law is already used to abusing her); Hai sees her mother giving her baby brother Ming a bottle of milk while she only gives her other daughter Hua (who was born right before Ming) a bottle of rice water — Hai is livid that her mother would continue to perpetuate the “preferential treatment of boys over girls” tradition after everything they suffered the past couple years precisely because they weren’t sons: “…Mom began to weep. “Hai, Ming is the only one who will support us when we are old. The only one who can care for us in the afterlife. I love Hua and all my other daughters, but I have a duty, as a wife, to make sure Ming grows up well. When you have your own son, you will understand.” She cried because she thought I was judging her unfairly, without realizing that her words had cut me deep. Mom hadn’t said it explicitly, but I heard it loud and clear: All of us girls were worth less than Ming. She loved us less than Ming. Yet Mom was confused by my anger, and oblivious to my pain. To her, the ancient traditions centering the son were our pillar, entwined in our religion, inseparable from our existence on this earth. Telling her I was hurt would be like saying I was offended by the typhoon that tore through Mount Davis. In her mind, these injustices were part of being a woman, and bearing them was simply our fate. Men made the rules in our society, but women often enforced them. Was there something about having a son that transformed us? Was that why Nai Nai was so wretched? Was that going to be me as a mother? I didn’t want it to be. After what I had been through, how could I fall into that same pattern?“ Arriving at this understanding becomes tremendously important for the characters in the story, which I won’t get into here (you will need to read this one to find out more).

Needless to say, this is a book I highly recommend, but with the understanding that it definitely won’t be an easy read. As with most stories about the travesties of war, this one has brutal scenes as it follows the harrowing journey of the Ang women through several generations, but the payoff at the end is well worth the read. This story (and its characters) is not one that I will forget anytime soon!

Received ARC from Berkley / Penguin Random House via BookBrowse First Impressions program.