Lee’s characters often adapt disguises, and Valora alternately poses as a male laborer alongside Jamie below decks and as a fashionable first-class widow who turns heads with her confidence and style. They haven’t seen each other for two years, and Valora has a scheme to reunite them: She wants to convince a circus executive who’s also on board to hire them both as acrobats for the Ringling Brothers. But Valora is determined to join her twin brother, Jamie, who has already boarded in third class for the first leg of a journey to Cuba. Although she has a valid first-class ticket, an officer has refused to let her board, claiming she lacks proper documentation and won’t be allowed to disembark in America due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The novel opens with a mesmerizing action scene as Valora Luck, a trained acrobat, catapults her way on board the doomed ship. Her new book, Luck of the Titanic, was prompted by a little-known fact: Of the eight Chinese passengers aboard the Titanic, six survived, but they were deported within 24 hours of arriving in the United States. Stacey Lee has earned critical acclaim and a loyal readership for intricately plotted fiction featuring Chinese characters amid memorable historical settings, including Under a Painted Sky and The Downstairs Girl.
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