{"title":"Books by Zhang Ling","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781662509001","title":"Where Waters Meet","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA daughter discovers the dramatic history that shaped her mother’s secret life in an emotional and immersive novel by Zhang Ling, the bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eA Single Swallow\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller’s mother, Rain, didn’t live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix’s life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain’s unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStruggling with the loss, Phoenix comes across her mother’s suitcase—a memory box Rain had brought from home. Inside, Phoenix finds two old photographs and a decorative bottle holding a crystallized powder. Her auntie Mei tells her these missing pieces of her mother’s early life can only be explained when they meet, and so, clutching her mother’s ashes, Phoenix boards a plane for China. What at first seems like a daughter’s quest to uncover a mother’s secrets becomes a startling journey of self-discovery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTold across decades and continents, Zhang Ling’s exquisite novel is a tale of extraordinary courage and survival. It illuminates the resilience of humanity, the brutalities of life, the secrets we keep and those we share, and the driving forces it takes to survive.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301845250421,"sku":"9781662509001","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781662509001_78541705-02c3-49ed-8c04-754cc3364fe7.jpg?v=1786024908"},{"product_id":"9781662509025","title":"Aftershock","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA catastrophic disaster in China triggers a mother’s heartbreaking choice and a daughter’s reconciliation with the past in a powerful novel by the author of \u003ci\u003eA Single Swallow\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWhere Waters Meet\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonizing decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives of her children. In that devastating split second, her seven-year-old daughter, Xiaodeng, is separated from her brother and the mother she loves and trusts. All Xiaodeng remembers of the fateful morning is betrayal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThirty years later, Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer living in Canada with a caring husband and daughter. However, her newfound fame and success do little to cover the deep wounds that disrupt her life, time and again, and edge her toward a breaking point. Xiaodeng realizes the only path toward healing is to return to Tangshan, find her mother, and get closure.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSpanning three decades of the emotional and cultural aftershocks of disaster, Zhang Ling’s intimate epic explores the damage of guilt, the healing pull of family, and the hope of one woman who, after so many years, still longs to be saved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303215509877,"sku":"9781662509025","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781662509025_7dc577f8-22fd-485f-9b07-e7023ec85742.jpg?v=1786024909"},{"product_id":"9781542041508","title":"A Single Swallow","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe eagerly awaited English translation of award-winning author Zhang Ling’s epic and intimate novel about the devastation of war, forgiveness, redemption, and the enduring power of love.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the day of the historic 1945 Jewel Voice Broadcast—in which Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces, bringing an end to World War II—three men, flush with jubilation, made a pact. After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. It’s where they had fought—and survived—a war that shook the world and changed their own lives in unimaginable ways. Now, seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by American missionary Pastor Billy, brash gunner’s mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll that’s missing is Ah Yan—also known as Swallow—the girl each man loved, each in his own profound way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs they unravel their personal stories of the war, and of the woman who touched them so deeply during that unforgiving time, the story of Ah Yan’s life begins to take shape, woven into view by their memories. A woman who had suffered unspeakable atrocities, and yet found the grace and dignity to survive, she’d been the one to bring them together. And it is her spark of humanity, still burning brightly, that gives these ghosts of the past the courage to look back on everything they endured and remember the woman they lost.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303375516021,"sku":"9781542041508","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781542041508_6b71bff0-1638-427a-8be3-36355f0cb61b.jpg?v=1786023278"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-zhang-ling.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}