An intoxicating story of family, ambition and the risks we take for love.” - NYT Bestselling Author Tara Conklin, author of THE HOUSE GIRL on THREE SOULS Janie Chang’s riveting debut gives us so much: a complex heroine, a window into the vanished world of pre-Communist China, a fascinating plot and language that sings. Suffused with history and literature, Three Souls is an epic tale of revenge and betrayal, forbidden love, and the price we are willing to pay for freedom. And when she discovers what she must do to be released from limbo into the afterlife, Leiyin realizes that the time for making amends is shorter than she thought. Her punishment for disobedience leads to exile, an unwanted marriage, a pregnancy, and, ultimately, her death. When Leiyin defies her father to pursue Hanchin, she learns the harsh truth-that she is powerless over her fate. At a party, she meets Hanchin, a captivating left-wing poet and translator, and instantly falls in love with him. She must, they tell her, make amends.Īs Leiyin delves back in time with the three souls to review her life, she sees the spoiled and privileged teenager she once was, a girl who is concerned with her own desires while China is fractured by civil war and social upheaval. Beside her are three souls-stern and scholarly yang impulsive, romantic yin and wise, shining hun-who will guide her toward understanding. So begins the haunting and captivating tale, set in 1935 China, of the ghost of a young woman named Leiyin, who watches her own funeral from above and wonders why she is being denied entry to the afterlife. We have three souls, or so I'd been told.

An absorbing novel of romance and revolution, loyalty and family, sacrifice and undying love

Three souls by janie chang