The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is a new novel by Jamie Ford, bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. The novel’s unique, utterly compelling premise explores the idea of epigenetic inheritance — What if we inherit more from our ancestors that we realize? What if, along with traits like height and eye color, we also inherit their tastes and preferences, rhythms of decision-making, even their trauma? Afong Moy, the matriarch of the novel, is a true-to-life historical figure, the first Chinese woman to set foot on American soil. Brought from Guangzhou to Baltimore in 1836, Afong was treated as a curiosity, made to perform nightly in front of crowds for little to no pay. Her devastating story acts as the first of many in this novel, setting the tone for the lives of her descendants, fictional characters dreamed up by Ford. There’s Lai Ki, a young girl living in Victorian San Francisco during the bubonic plague; Zoe, a teenager coming of age in a 1920s English boarding school; Faye, a nurse working with the Flying Tigers in China during World War II; Greta, a modern-day app developer who strikes it big with a dating app; and Dorothy, a former US Poet Laureate raising her daughter in a futuristic Seattle. Each Moy woman’s story is singular yet connected to Afong in curious ways; misfortune and loss are ever present in the family line. When Dorothy, living in 2045, discovers an experimental treatment that might mitigate her inherited trauma, she signs herself up, willing to do anything to alleviate the depression, anxiety, and dissociative episodes that have always clouded her life. The reader follows along as Dorothy unpacks the traumatic memories buried in her DNA and fights to save her daughter, Annabel, from the same fate as her ancestors.

Spanning from 1836 to 2045, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is an ambitious feat, and Ford tackles it with grace. He richly imagines the various settings, from a bustling Baltimore harbor to a Seattle mired in climate change, and his descriptions make it easy to acclimate as the eras change with the chapters. I loved immersing myself in the different time periods, seeing the ways women’s roles have changed (or haven’t changed) throughout the centuries. One thing to note — because the book is essentially six novels in one, it wasn’t until about halfway through that I felt I knew the characters well enough to lose myself in the story. I’m so glad I stuck with it though, because once I was able to establish the characters in my mind, the story flew by at lighting speed. Similar to Steinbeck’s East of Eden, this novel becomes more interesting the further it progresses because the reader can map the new generations onto the previous generations, finding connections, clues, and recurring motifs. The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is distinctive and exhilarating, poetic and enlightening — I absolutely loved it.

I’d recommend this book to…

• Anyone who enjoys a novel told through multiple, interlocking perspectives… it’s similar in style to There, There by Tommy Orange
• Anyone who loves multi-generational family stories that explore inheritance and fate… it’s similar in theme to East of Eden by John Steinbeck andPachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Anyone looking for a story that’s both nostalgic and forward-thinking… it’s similar in tone to The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett