Water Ghosts

Title: Water Ghosts

Author:  Shawna Yang Ryan

Publisher: Penguin Press, April 2009

Summary: According to Chinese superstition, those who die by drowning will seek the living to take their place.

It’s 1928 and the residents of Locke, California and the surrounding towns are getting ready for the Dragon Boat Festival. All is going smoothly until an unknown boat drifts to shore. The boat is carrying three bedraggled Chinese women and seems to have come out of nowhere. One of the women is Ming Wai, the wife that Richard Fong left behind in China several years ago. Richard is now the manager of a successful gambling parlor in Locke and was never able to return to China for his wife. While Ming Wai was languishing in China, Richard was living comfortably as a bachelor in California, complete with his own prostitute.Most of the townspeople are confused about the arrival of the three women but Poppy See, the brothel madam is suspicious. Poppy is a seer and had a premonition of bodies washing ashore before the women arrived. Now strange things are happening to the town and the people living there.

Water Ghosts is a wonderfully written tale of love, loss, and the consequences of betrayal.

Who will like this book?  Fans of historical fiction and mystery.

Recommended by: Sue, Circulation Coordinator

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