Eons before the birth of the Roman Empire, there was a civilization dedicated to the sciences of earth, sea, and sky. In the City of Light lived people who made dark plans to lay waste to their uncivilized neighbors using the very power of the planet itself. As the great science of their time was brought to bear on the invading hordes, hell was set loose on Earth. And the civilization of Atlantis disappeared in a suicidal storm of fire and water…
“The Fortunes is the kind of book that raises far more questions than it resolves. Not only does it present a vast swathe of often-ignored history, in deftly fictionalized form, it’s an empathetic book, not just to its protagonists but to its secondary and tertiary characters and even, often, to its villains. It questions motivations, feelings, intentions, rarely certain despite the author’s fictional imperative. Sometimes I found myself wondering”—Huffington Post
“Only a writer as gifted as Peter Ho Davies could capture the full weight of a century’s history with such an extraordinary lightness of touch. In his deft hands the dust falls away from a collection of hoary images—the building of the transcontinental railroad, the steaming laundry in Chinatown, the Dragon Lady flickering onscreen—revealing Chinese-American lives and desires in all their freshness, intensity, contradictoriness, and depth. Buoyant yet profound, unsentimental yet affecting, and above all beautifully written, The Fortunes reimagines in thrilling ways what the multi-generational immigrant novel can be.” – Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Madeleine Is Sleeping and Ms. Hempel Chronicles
