Shawna Yang Ryan. (2009). Water Ghosts. Penguin Publishing Group.

Shawna Yang Ryan. 2009. Water Ghosts. Penguin Publishing Group.

Shawna Yang Ryan, Water Ghosts. Penguin Publishing Group, 2009.

Shawna Yang Ryan. Water Ghosts. Penguin Publishing Group, 2009.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/BBF/5C7/65/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/BBF/5C7/65/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101014462
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B001PYO3FS
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101014462
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9780143117278

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Shawna Yang Ryan

title

Water Ghosts

dateAdded

2009-03-19T01:21:00.543Z

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=218141
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

Water Ghosts

crossRefId

218141

id

BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A

starRating

3.6

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: WaterGhosts_9781101014462_218141
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 244206
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101014462
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 4/16/2009
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/1523-1/BBF/5C7/65/WaterGhosts9781101014462.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: WaterGhosts_218141
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B001PYO3FS
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 4/16/2009
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/1523-1/BBF/5C7/65/WaterGhosts9781101014462.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: WaterGhosts_9781101014462_218141
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101014462
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 4/16/2009
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/1523-1/BBF/5C7/65/WaterGhosts9781101014462.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: Animals
2. • value: family
3. • value: relationships
4. • value: literary fiction
5. • value: Historical
6. • value: romance
7. • value: culture
8. • value: Fiction
9. • value: crime
10. • value: novels
11. • value: classic
12. • value: love
13. • value: Coming of age
14. • value: Dogs
15. • value: Short Stories
16. • value: Historical Fiction
17. • value: mystery
18. • value: Drama
19. • value: Modern
20. • value: magical realism
21. • value: feminism
22. • value: literature
23. • value: Alternate History
24. • value: fiction books
25. • value: fantasy
26. • value: school
27. • value: Literary
28. • value: historical novels
29. • value: magical realism novel
30. • value: magical realism fiction
31. • value: historical fiction novels
32. • value: historical fiction books
33. • value: books historical fiction
34. • value: magical realism novels
35. • value: magical realism books
36. • value: realistic fiction books
37. • value: books fiction

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Ryan, Shawna Yang
   • name: Shawna Yang Ryan

imprint

Penguin Books

publishDate

2009-04-16T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Water Ghosts

fullDescription

A mesmerizing debut novel that weaves history and mythology around a community of Chinese immigrants and the ghosts that haunt them
Locke, California, 1928. Three bedraggled Chinese women appear out of the mist in a small Chinese farming town on the Sacramento River. Two are unknown to its residents, while the third is the long-lost wife of Richard Fong, the handsome manager of the local gambling parlor. As the lives of the townspeople become inextricably intertwined with the newly arrived women, their frightening power is finally revealed.
A lyrical imagining of what happens when a Chinese ghost story comes true, Water Ghosts is a rich tale of human passions and mingling cultures that will appeal to readers of Lisa See, Anchin Min, and Gail Tsukiyama.

reviews

1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 12, 2009
     A dreamlike haze shimmers over Ryan's debut, the tale of a real-life immigrants' enclave in early 20th-century California. In the mining town of Locke outside Sacramento, Richard Fong's Lucky Fortune casino and Poppy See's brothel provide the only entertainment for Chinese workers sending their wages back to the families they can't bring into the country. For Chloe, a white prostitute who is Richard's favorite, it's also a place to hide from her family just a few towns over. Mired in the past, the town's residents are jolted into the present when three strange Chinese women, including Richard's long-lost wife, arrive during the Dragon Boat Festival looking for their husbands. After years of her absence, Richard struggles to adapt his bachelor lifestyle to accommodate a woman who has become a stranger to him, and Chloe dreams of starting over somewhere new when Richard abandons her bed. Ryan's fluid flashbacks allow the past to sweep over the collective population of Locke, and her elegant female protagonists manage to exercise their own agency even when they're hemmed in by life in Locke.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     March 1, 2009
     Using a handful of characters, debut novelist Ryan offers impressions of a Chinese-American community in 1920s California.
     
     Richard Fong is in bed with Chloe in a brothel. Down the hall, Poppy See mourns his abandonment of her, while on the river a craft bearing three mystery women gatecrashes the Dragon Boat Festival. The author offers a historically accurate portrait of Locke, an agricultural settlement near Sacramento leased to the Chinese by a white owner. The men work on the local ranches picking fruit and vegetables. We learn that 38-year-old Richard manages a gambling hall, that 17-year-old Chloe, the only Caucasian in the brothel, is his favored whore, that Poppy is the madam and that the arrival of the smuggled"boat-women" is a pivotal event. One of them is Ming Wai, who married Richard ten years earlier, in 1918, and lost face when he left China without her. Her two companions, given sanctuary in the church, have dozens of suitors in a town where men outnumber women 20 to one, but Ryan scants the comic/dramatic potential of this setup by skittishly turning her attention to other characters or evoking their pasts in their Chinese homeland.There's a second, lightly sketched interracial relationship involving a Chinese pastor and his white wife, whose teenage daughter, a stereotypical danger-courting runaway, has become friendly with Chloe. The only real plotline traces Richard's violent breakup with Chloe after his wife arrives; Poppy, a soothsayer, believes all three boat-women are water ghosts. The novel's supernatural and realistic elements compete awkwardly for dominance. The supposed ghosts get their chance to wreak havoc when the levees break, but despite a number of deaths their status remains a mystery.
     
     Fascinating material clumsily shaped.

     (COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 15, 2008
     This loosely historical piece set in 1928 centers on the lives of the Chinese and white residents of Locke, CA. The alcoholic Madam (Poppy) See, proprietor of the town's whorehouse, takes a pregnant, teenage Chloe Howell on as one of her girls, only to lose her lover, Richard Fong, to Chloe. Adding to this mix are Corlissa Lee, a white woman married to the local Chinese preacher, who assists three women smuggled from China, one being Richard's wife. Ryan's writing is reminiscent of that of Amy Tan and Lisa See because she incorporates elements of ghosts and tales of Chinese folklore and frequently provides backstories for her characters. As a whole, Ryan's debut feels forced, as the story moves slowly and meanders without providing enough significance to the nine principal characters she identifies in the book's opening. Several of them seem more like the minor characters that Ryan also lists. Despite this, Ryan's work maintains a lyrical and haunting quality throughout. Overall, this finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award is a good first effort, but only libraries with considerable budgets or demand for such historical works need consider.Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L.s, Santa Ana, CA

     Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 15, 2008
     On a foggy morning in 1928, the arrival of a boat carrying three women upsets the equilibrium of Locke, a small California community created by Chinese immigrants in which the ministers wife is the only white women not a prostitute. No life is more altered than that of Richard Fong, manager of the Lucky Fortune Gambling Hall, who left his wife, Ming Wai, in China 10 years earlier to make his fortune in America and has yet to return to see her. One of many men in Locke without a woman, he consorted first with brothel operator and seer Madame Poppy See, then with one of her younger girlsuntil he finds that a worn Ming Wai is one of the women in the boat. Poppy, who still loves Richard and is disturbed by the arrival of the women, must determine whether her concerns are dreams fueled by jealousy or premonitions of danger. Ryan explores love, desire, loss, and betrayal as she combines history and myth in lyrical prose that is both delicate and sensuous. An accomplished and affecting first novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

popularity

9

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/bbf5c765-acae-4c63-958c-5b9092e8207a/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json

id

bbf5c765-acae-4c63-958c-5b9092e8207a

starRating

3.6

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/BBF/5C7/65/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/BBF/5C7/65/{BBF5C765-ACAE-4C63-958C-5B9092E8207A}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Fantasy
2. • value: Fiction
3. • value: Literature
4. • value: Historical Fiction

publishDateText

04/16/2009

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9781594202070

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

A mesmerizing debut novel that weaves history and mythology around a community of Chinese immigrants and the ghosts that haunt them
Locke, California, 1928. Three bedraggled Chinese women appear out of the mist in a small Chinese farming town on the Sacramento River. Two are unknown to its residents, while the third is the long-lost wife of Richard Fong, the handsome manager of the local gambling parlor. As the lives of the townspeople become inextricably intertwined with the newly arrived women, their frightening power is finally revealed.
A lyrical imagining of what happens when a Chinese ghost story comes true, Water Ghosts is a rich tale of human passions and mingling cultures that will appeal to readers of Lisa See, Anchin Min, and Gail Tsukiyama.

sortTitle

Water Ghosts

crossRefId

218141

publisher

Penguin Publishing Group

bisacCodes

1. • code: FIC014000
   • description: FICTION / Historical / General
2. • code: FIC019000
   • description: Fiction / Literary
3. • code: FIC061000
   • description: Fiction / Magical Realism