The Fortunes

The Fortunes

Peter Ho Davies

The Fortunes won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Chautauqua Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and was named an NPR Best Book of the Year. Sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts American history through the lives of Chinese Americans and reimagines the multigenerational novel through the fractures of immigrant family experience. Inhabiting four lives—a railroad baron's valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor; Hollywood's first Chinese movie star; a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes the Asian American community; and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption—this novel captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive—as much through love as blood.