Ursula, under / a novel by Ingrid Hill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hill, Ingrid.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Multiracial children--Fiction.

Multiracial children.

Mine accidents.

Mine rescue work.

Finnish Americans.

Interracial marriage--Fiction.

Interracial marriage.

Finnish Americans--Fiction.

Chinese Americans--Fiction.

Chinese Americans.

Mine rescue work--Fiction.

Mine accidents--Fiction.

Poor families--Fiction.

Poor families.

Girls--Fiction.

Girls.

Upper Peninsula (Mich.)--Fiction.

Upper Peninsula (Mich.).

Genre:

Fiction.

Suspense fiction.

Domestic fiction.

Physical Description:

476 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004.

Summary:

In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a dangerous rescue effort draws the ears and eyes of the entire country. A two-and-a-half-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft -- "the only sound is an astonished tiny intake of breath from Ursula as she goes down, like a penny into the slot of a bank, disappeared, gone." It is as if all hope for life on the planet is bound up in the rescue of this little girl, the first and only child of a young woman of Finnish extraction and her Chinese-American husband. One TV viewer following the action notes that the Wong family lives in a decrepit mobile home and wonders why all this time and money is being "wasted on that half-breed trailer-trash kid."

In response, the novel takes a breathtaking leap back in time to visit Ursula's most remarkable ancestors: a third-century-B.C. Chinese alchemist; an orphaned playmate of a seventeenth-century Swedish queen; Professor Alabaster Wong, a Chautauqua troupe lecturer (on exotic Chinese topics) traveling the Midwest at the end of the nineteenth century; her great-great-grandfather Jake Maki, who died at twenty-nine in a Michigan iron mine cave-in; and others whose richness and history are contained in the induplicable DNA of just one person -- little Ursula Wong.

Ursula's story echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that her very existence -- like ours -- comes to seem a miracle. Ambitious and accomplished, Ursula, Under is, most of all, wonderfully entertaining -- a daring saga of culture, history, and heredity.

Contents:

1. Ursula 1

2. The Alchemist's Last Concubine 15

3. Justin 55

4. The Caravan-Master's Lieutenant 71

5. Annie 111

6. The Minister of Maps 127

7. Justin and Annie 179

8. A Foundling at the Court 223

9. Jinx 267

10. A Wastrel Killed by a Snail 301

11. Mindy Ji and Joe 359

12. The Woman Who Married the Baker's Friend 381

13. Ursula Again 447.

Notes:

"A Shannon Ravenel book."

ISBN:

1565123883

OCLC:

53967113