"About a Chinese American chef who, lured to a decadent, enigmatic colony of the super rich in a near future in which food is disappearing, discovers the meaning of pleasure and the ethics of who gets to enjoy it, altering her life and, indirectly, the world"--

Offered patronage by Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate, in 1906, Gemma, a silver-voiced soprano, and Suling, a Chinatown embroideress, when Henry disappears, along with the fabled Phoenix Crown, are brought together five years later in one last desperate quest for justice.

Victor Chin's life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with leprosy, he's forced to leave the familiar confines of the Bronx - the only home he's known since emigrating from China - to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution. Between treatments he dreams of escape. But soon he finds a new sense of freedom far from home - one without the pull of obligations to his family. Here, in the company...