Violet is eventually reunited with her mother, and eventually also her daughter Flora. She recalls her upbringing by remote parents in the US, her runaway with an unknown Chinese painter, and her struggle to be accepted as the mother of their two children. The second part of the story is told by the mother, who thinks the daughter is dead. Her first marriage results in a child, Flora, who is taken from Violet as a result of an unlawful marriage. The two form a lifelong relationship through Violet's marriages to former clients. It begins in the early 1900s in China and encompasses some of the political upheavals there in the first half of the century. It is an epic account of the relationship of a mother and daughter over nearly half a century. When the Qing dynasty falls in 1912, mother and daughter are separated and the young girl is sold to a rivaling courtesan house, where she is educated by an older girl, Magic Gourd, formerly of her mother's house. This book is historical fiction, one of my favorite genres. Violet grows up unaware of who her father is and unsure of her mother's feelings for her. In the first part of the story, Violet tells the story of growing up in Hidden Jade Path, a courtesan house in Shanghai that is run by her mother, an American woman named Lulu Minturn. An excerpt from the novel was published independently as Rules for Virgins. Like many of her works, it deals with mother-daughter relationship and is partly set in historical China. The Valley of Amazement is a novel by Amy Tan.
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