In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.

I thought I was modern. I thought I had choice.

Shanghai, 1937. Pearl and May are two beautiful, modern, carefree sisters - until their father tells them that he has gambled away the family's wealth. In order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to two 'Gold Mountain' men: Americans. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, they must travel across Southern China, in and out of'the clutches of brutal soldiers, and across the ocean to a new, married life in Los Angeles' Chinatown.

A sweeping tale of terrifying sacrifices, impossible choices, and one, devastating, life-changing secret, this is a heartbreaking novel of two sisters who must hold fast to who they are - Shanghai girls.