I first met Michaela MacColl and was introduced to her historical fiction when she came as a special guest to the Highlights Foundation Writers’ Workshop I attended. They gave us a copy of Rory’s Promise that she signed and I devoured before the workshop was over. Recently, I saw an offering of her newest work on Net Galley. I didn’t have to consider whether to request an advance reading copy!
So start with a talented writer of historical fiction, give her a great-great-grandmother born in 1870s Shanghai, and turn her loose to do extensive research – and there is a good chance that a fine novel will result. Michaela takes sketchy information about Ning, daughter of an American father and Chinese mother and marries it to detailed research before weaving an engrossing novel that results in the book View from Pagoda Hill.
Ning, who begins life in China, becomes a misfit with her big feet that are not bound into tiny blossoms to form a foot three inches long, as is the custom in that era among the gentry. The matchmaker who comes while Ning is just twelve years old uses a derogatory term, calling her a “yellowfish” and lets her and her mother know she is unmarriageable with those ugly feet. Her traveling father, whom she has never met, seems to be the answer to her mother’s concern for her to have a good life. He arranges to have her travel to America and live with his parents. She soon learns that she is a misfit in America as well. In China and the United States, Ning fits the role of outsider while having a champion in both places who has her back when she needs it.
In the back matter, the author’s note is almost as interesting as the story Michaela weaves. She gives information both historical and familial that she knows to be true that forms the framework of the tale she weaves around it. View from Pagoda Hill is well-researched and told with heart, so don’t let those middle-graders who are listed as its audience have all the fun.
