The art of storytelling features an engrossing tale and pitch-perfect delivery; Caitlin Chung excels at both in her debut, Ship of Fates. A young woman listens as Mei, an ancient lighthouse keeper, combines the legend of "Maker of Gold Mountain" with her tragic life story. The young woman hears "these stories--the ones about her, about this place, and about the old place, too."
The legend begins in China in 1000 BC, where Mei, a beautiful woman betrothed to a foreigner, steals her dowry gold and rides a whale across the sea to a rocky coast with a welcoming bay. There she throws the gold into rivers and hills "where no gold was before, nor was ever meant to be." Although she's free, she's also cursed. She must keep fires going, "a mirror for the feral hope of her search" until she recovers every nugget she stole.
In 1849, Mei still lives in San Francisco, "a city stained yellow--yellow in the flowers and gold in the waters." She's collected an unimaginable amount of gold in her lighthouse, but it's still not enough. Desperate to be free, she entraps another young woman, only to see this selfish act backfire. Mei is still "surrounded by an amount of gold as dense and deep as need, as soft as a desperate woman's conviction." Thus Mei, the maker of Gold Mountain, remains in her lighthouse to this day. Desire, deceit and regret come together in this spellbinding mixture of legend and heartbreak. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.