Love and Other Consolation Prizes

August 1, 2017

In his third novel, Ford returns with a story framed much like his debut best seller, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. A historical romance with a Chinese American boy and a Japanese American girl as its centerpiece, the story moves between two time periods: that of the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition and the 1962 Century 21 Exposition. Basing his narrative on research of actual events and people, including one unfortunate child named Ernest Young, who was raffled off at the 1909 World's Fair and a notorious "madam" of elite companionship, Ford ambitiously attempts to highlight social movements and ills of the time. The novel starts off strong, weaving Ernest's tale with the flourishing of human trade from East Asia to the United States (more than 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation), then going on to portray the height of Seattle's red-light district against the peak of Washington state's suffrage movement. The latter half of the book feels rushed, with what is perhaps a too-tidy ending. Still, it's a laudable effort that shines light on little-known histories. VERDICT With its chivalrous protagonist, this coming-of-age story-cum-romance has just enough emotional resonance to move most readers. [Library marketing.]--Suzanne Im, Los Angeles P.L.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
Too old to dream of being adopted, Ernest Young is raffled off at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific World Exposition to Madame Flora, who runs a notorious brothel. His adventures have just begun.Ernest has already lived a lifetime of surprises and indignities. After his starving Chinese mother secured her only son a spot on a freighter to America, Ernest, only 5 years old, had to learn swiftly how to navigate a world that denigrated him not only for being an orphan, but also, and perhaps worse, for being of mixed blood. Ernest never knew his white father, but his youth and mixed heritage enabled him to make friends with both the Chinese girls on the ship and the lone Japanese girl, Fahn. Once Ernest survived a month captive in the hold of the ship, not to mention a near drowning, he became a ward of the state in Seattle and eventually attracted a wealthy sponsor, who sent him to an exclusive boarding school, where he endured racism and discrimination, and then, when he has the temerity to tell her he would rather go to another school, she has him raffled off at the World's Fair. Surprisingly, life in the bordello is exciting, not least because there Ernest meets Madame Flora's tomboyishly charming daughter, Maisie, and reunites with Fahn. Falling in love with both, however, can only lead to heartache, since life in a brothel exacts certain prices. Ford (Songs of Willow Frost, 2014, etc.) casts this complex love story against the backdrop of the little-known history of Chinese and Japanese orphans, who found slavery and indentured servitude rather than opportunity in America. Now in his 60s, Ernest faces his wife Gracie's declining control over her memory, which endangers the secrets he has kept from their daughters. But now their eldest, an investigative reporter, has begun to discover some potentially scandalous secrets. Alternating between Ernest's past and present, Ford captures the thrill of first kisses and the shock of revealing long-hidden affairs. A lively history of romance in the dens of iniquity, love despite vice.

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October 9, 2017
In this uneven novel from Ford (Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet), the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair brings back memories for Ernest Young, né Yung Kun-ai, a man in his 60s. In 1902, Ernest travels in steerage to the United States and ends up in a Seattle orphanage. In 1909 he’s auctioned off at the World’s Fair, becoming a houseboy in an upscale brothel in the Tenderloin district. There he befriends Fahn, a Japanese girl who was in steerage with him seven years prior, and Maisie, the madam’s daughter, falling in love with both of them. Back in 1962, it’s made clear that Ernest’s ailing wife, now called Gracie, shares his difficult past—but which girl he married frustratingly isn’t revealed until late in the book. Their grown children, Hanny, a Vegas dancer, and Juju, a journalist, don’t have the full story about their parents’ history until Juju discovers an article about a boy auctioned off at the 1909 fair whose name was “Ernest” and wants to delve further into it. Despite the book’s flaws, Ford nevertheless excels at juxtaposing Seattle in the 1910s, with its Temperance movements, prostitution, and political involvement in the city’s underbelly, against the glitter and promise of the 1962 World’s Fair.