In 1927, 15-year-old Joan Lee moves with her family from Ohio to a small town in West Virginia. As the only Chinese-Americans in town, the Lees face social ostracism and overt racism from townspeople who boycott the Lee family business. Joan herself feels tensions between the pressure at home to follow strict Chinese traditions and the pressure at school to assimilate into a white American mainstream. The Chinese folktale of the star fisher, a bird/woman caught between two worlds, provides the central metaphor for this rich, witty, engrossing novel. (Ages 10-13)

It is 1927, and Joan Lee and her family have just moved to West Virginia to open a laundry and start new lives. But the Lees are the first Chinese-Americans that Clarksburg has ever seen, and not everyone in town is ready to welcome them. "A forceful picture of prejudice and persecution . . . and a touching picture of courage and patience in enduring both".--Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books.