Flowers for Mei-Ling - Hardcover

This first novel follows the journey of Mei-Ling Wang from a young Communist idealist in Mao's Red Guards to a wealthy businesswoman running a contemporary art gallery in Montreal. Told from the perspectives of Mei-Ling and the three men who love her, Flowers is a complex portrait of a woman whose values have been tempered by poverty and the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Her first husband, a drug dealer, teaches her that money and property are often one's only advantage in a world of shifting political landscapes. Her second husband, a Vietnam-era draft resister and idealist, is unable to accept the choices that survival has forced Mei-Ling to make. This artfully told story brilliantly demonstrates how the personal is subject to the political in a world where no one is truly safe. Combining believable characterizations with an insightful historical depiction of the last 50 years, Lachs has written a genuine page-turner as fresh as today's news and as timeless as any good love story.?Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lachs has penned an achingly beautiful and heartrending tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit. As the Eurasian daughter of dedicated Communist intellectuals who are viciously betrayed during the purges accompanying Mao's Cultural Revolution, Mei-Ling Wang's innocence is permanently shattered by the harsh and brutal reality she experiences as both a member and a victim of the Red Guard. Escaping to Hong Kong with her physically and emotionally devastated mother, Mei-Ling is determined to salvage the wreckage of their lives. Realizing that financial security is the key to survival, she forgoes love and passion for the comfort and stability she enjoys as the mistress of an amoral Dutch businessman. Living first in Europe then in Canada, Mei-Ling eventually realizes that she must come full circle and return to China in order to reclaim her lost soul. An empathetic and absolutely entrancing narrative portrait of one woman's remarkable quest to triumph over the random cruelty of historical circumstance. Margaret Flanagan