An Empire of Women

the long version

"Talented, strong-willed, unabashedly exotic, three generations of Arneaux women share a passion for the arts and their Sino-French roots, yet rarely agree on anything. Then a child enters their lives, whose future is theirs to decide, and their family myths are forever transformed.". "The story captures the reunion of Celine Arneaux, a famous French-Chinese photographer, with her Asian-American daughter and granddaughter. The setting is a family cabin in Virginia, where Celine once photographed her granddaughter, Cameron, for a scandalous series of child portraits. Squeezed between grandmother and granddaughter is Cameron's emotionally displaced mother, Sumin. Joining them at the cabin are two outsiders: Sumin's lover Grady, a journalist who has been assigned to write a profile of Celine; and Alice, an appealing and poised six-year-old Chinese girl temporarily entrusted to Cameron. To each of the adults, Alice represents a fresh chance, a chance to be less self-absorbed than each had been the past. But the chance to decide Alice's future also unleashes a ruthlessness that has marked the family's history since the Cultural Revolution, and forces exposure of a long-buried secret."--BOOK JACKET.