Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist caught in the political crosshairs of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong with her young daughter, Sun Yi wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival - then promptly had a breakdown that left her committed to a mental institution. Growing up, Tessa watches her mother care for Sun Yi, both of them struggling under the weight of Sun Yi’s unexamined trauma and mental illness.

Vowing to escape her mother’s smothering fear, Tessa leaves home and travels to the farthest, most remote corners of the...