Name: Red Thread Sisters
ISBN: 9780670013869

Carol Antoinette Peacock

After an American family adopts eleven-year-old Wen from a Chinese orphanage, she vows to find a family for her best friend, too.

Red Thread Sisters

Kim Tyo-Dickerson

Compelling portrayal of international older child adoption. Wen, newly adopted from China, is 11 years old and struggles to connect to her new family, her mom, dad and younger sister, who was also adopted from China but as a baby. While trying to be brave and a good daughter so that her parents won't send her back, which is her greatest fear because that happened to another child at the orphanage while she was there, Wen also desperately wants to be reunited with her beloved friend in the orphanage Shu Ling, whose misshapen leg and age is believed to be a deal-breaker for her to be adopted internationally. Wen innocently promised Shu Ling that she would find a family for her too, and she feverishly works up the courage to ask her family to adopt Shu Ling, but it is impossible due to her father recently losing his job. Wen tries every other avenue open to her in her limited experience of suburban America. She approaches families in her neighborhood with Shu Ling's photo and canvasses the local McDonalds looking for a family that would welcome a Chinese daughter. As her search for a family for Shu Ling runs up against Shu Ling's fast approaching 13th birthday and the end of her adoption hopes, Wen struggles to show the affection she starts to feel for her new family while staying loyal to Shu Ling, the only family she has ever known. The ending may wrap up these two girls' worlds too neatly, but maybe not. There's authentic resilience here, there's anxiety and comfort here, there's the blending of family lost and found here. In the author's note, Peacock shares that while writing the novel she consulted the voices and experiences of many older Chinese adoptees and their parents, as well as drawing from her own experiences when adopting her two daughters from China. There is the ring of lived truth in her development of Wen and Shu Ling's bond that comes directly from the stories of adopted older children from China, and that gives this novel its realism and ultimately its power.

Red Thread Sisters

Reviews

Highlights