In the vein of Memoirs of a Geisha and Empress Orchid, a mesmerizing novel about two young girls growing up in feudal China

Shanghai, 1937. Pearl and May are two sisters from a bourgeois family. Both are beautiful, modern and living a carefree life, until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away the family's wealth, and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to two 'Gold Mountain' men: Americans.