Nearly a decade after the U.S. publication of Canadian author Choy's award-winning debut novel, The Jade Peony , comes the prequel to the Chen family story. Previously published in Canada, the novel focuses on the Chinese Canadian experience in Vancouver from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, tracing the emigration and evolution of the Chens through the eyes of first-born son Kiam-Kim. The story is richly told and liberally sprinkled with defined Cantonese phrases in the Sze Yup dialect. The descriptions of Chinese life and culture in Vancouver are reminiscent of those in the first novel, which Kiam-Kim's siblings narrated. Both novels end at much the same time, which leaves this reviewer wondering whether Choy is planning to turn the Chen family's story into a tidy trilogy. Readers whose background parallels the Chens' will especially appreciate Choy's characters. Public and academic libraries already owning the first novel and those with Asian American fiction collections will definitely want to add this one. [A reprint of The Jade Peony is planned for simultaneous release.â€"Ed.]â€"Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

In Choy's lovingly detailed novel (following The Jade Peony and the memoir Paper Shadows ), three-year-old Kiam-Kim Chen journeys from China to Vancouver in 1925 with his father and his grandmother, Poh-Poh (a former Chinese slave girl). As he matures, he gains a stepmother, an adopted brother and two stepsiblings. Poh-Poh's unsettling stories of kitchen gods and ghosts provide vivid reminders of the Old China the family left behind. Set pieces form the novel's core, like Poh-Poh's elaborate preparations for her mah-jongg party when Kiam is eight. That's when he first encounters Jenny Chong, a "tiger" girl with a fierce temper (and, eventually, the good looks to match it). When Poh-Poh dies, Old China's ghosts really do come backâ€"at least the ghost of Poh-Poh (who haunts Kiam's stepbrother, Sekky, so intensely that Kiam's embarrassed father hires an exorcist). As Kiam grows up, the relationship among Kiam, Jenny and Jack O'Connor, the Irish-Catholic boy next door (whom Poh-Poh had barred from their house) gets tangled in the complexities of WWII and the ethnic politics of the neighborhood. Choy's novel captures the spirit in which exile turns into assimilation. (Feb.)