Where Waters Meet, Zhang Ling
Where Waters Meet, Zhang Ling
List: $42.99 | Sale: $30.10
Club: $21.49

Where Waters Meet

Author: Zhang Ling

Narrator: Nancy Wu, Dan John Miller

Unabridged: 10 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/01/2023


Synopsis

A daughter discovers the dramatic history that shaped her mother’s secret life in an emotional and immersive novel by Zhang Ling, the bestselling author of A Single Swallow.There was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller’s mother, Rain, didn’t live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix’s life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain’s unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.Struggling with the loss, Phoenix comes across her mother’s suitcase—a memory box Rain had brought from home. Inside, Phoenix finds two old photographs and a decorative bottle holding a crystallized powder. Her auntie Mei tells her these missing pieces of her mother’s early life can only be explained when they meet, and so, clutching her mother’s ashes, Phoenix boards a plane for China. What at first seems like a daughter’s quest to uncover a mother’s secrets becomes a startling journey of self-discovery.Told across decades and continents, Zhang Ling’s exquisite novel is a tale of extraordinary courage and survival. It illuminates the resilience of humanity, the brutalities of life, the secrets we keep and those we share, and the driving forces it takes to survive.

About Zhang Ling

Zhang Ling is the award-winning author of nine novels and numerous collections of novellas and short stories, including A Single Swallow, translated by Shelly Bryant; Gold Mountain Blues; and Aftershock, which was adapted into China’s first IMAX movie with unprecedented box-office success. Born in China, she moved to Canada in 1986 and, in the mid-1990s, began to write and publish fiction in Chinese while working as a clinical audiologist. Since then, she has won the Chinese Media Literature Award for Author of the Year, the Grand Prize of Overseas Chinese Literary Award, and China Times’s Open Book Award. Where Waters Meet is her first novel written in English.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Pat Brune on December 27, 2023

It feels like I should be embarrassed to write a negative review after the trials these women endured, and reading of the awful conditions they lived in during their youths. However, this book was a monumental struggle. I almost closed the covers several times. In some areas the writing is profound,......more

Goodreads review by Ritu on March 19, 2023

Where Waters Meet is a heartwrenching story about a daughter and her journey to discovering the truth about her mother's life after her death. Phoenix, or Yuan Feng, travels from Canada to China in search of answers and peace for her mother, Rain, or Chunyu, from the only living relative left on her......more

Goodreads review by Shirin on September 06, 2024

"Some might call this a lie; others, magic. What’s truth, anyway? Truth is like water, assuming the shape of whatever it flows into." The story of Phoenix now in Canada, plus another story of younger Phoenix and her mother Rain in China, plus young Rain and her sister before everything... was unexpec......more

Goodreads review by Kerri on April 19, 2023

April’s first read choice I chose this book as April’s first read, free each month for Amazon Prime members. I enjoyed this story as it unfolds while Phoenix is writing a memoir within it. Very well written with a glimpse of what life was like during the Chinese/Japanese war.......more

Goodreads review by Nursebookie on May 01, 2023

TITLE: WHERE WATERS MEET AUTHOR: ZHANG LING 张翎 PUB DATE: 05.01.2023 Available Now As a mother, my relationship with my daughter is one I treasure. The bonds we have formed are unbreakable. WHERE WATERS MEET by Zhang Ling is a poignant and immersive story about a mother and daughter relationship, as P......more


Quotes

“Zhang’s strengths in Where Waters Meet are her intriguing interwoven plot; vivid, surprising characters; and evocation of the political crises during Chunyu’s lifetime.” Historical Novels Review

“This emotional and heartbreaking novel is a tale of courage, survival, and human resilience in the face of war and repression.” Booklist

“A stunning, gorgeous novel. Zhang Ling’s Where Waters Meet is haunting and heartbreaking as it navigates mother-daughter relationships in the face of war and famine. I simply couldn’t put it down.” —Devi S. Laskar, author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues and Circa