Shawna Yang Ryan discusses and signs Water Ghosts: A Novel May 5, 2009

Three bedraggled Chinese women suddenly appear out of the mist one afternoon in a small Chinese farming town on the Sacramento River, and their arrival throws the community into confusion. Two of the women are unknown to the townspeople, while the third is the long-lost wife of Richard Fong, the manager of the local gambling parlor, who had left her behind in China many years earlier and had not yet returned for her.

Shawna Yang Ryan’s melodic first novel is a passionate, sophisticated intertwining of fact and fiction that examines mingling cultures, modern myths, and forgotten history. It beautifully chronicles separation and betrayal, loneliness and longing, and what happens when a Chinese ghost story begins to come true.

Born in Sacramento, California, the child of parents who met during the Vietnam War when her father was stationed in Taiwan, Shawna Yang Ryan graduated from UC Berkeley and received an M.A. from the UC Davis. In 2002, she was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. Water Ghosts was a finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award.

[Book formerly entitled Locke 128]

Official Website: http://www.keplers.com