The Third Son

It's 1943. As air-raid sirens blare in Japanese-occupiedTaiwan, eight-year-old Saburo walks through the peachforests of Taoyuan. The least favored son of a Taiwanesepolitician, Saburo is in no hurry to get home to the tauntingand abuse he suffers at the hands of his parents and olderbrother. In the forest he meets Yoshiko, whose descriptionsof her loving family are to Saburo like a glimpse of paradise.Meeting her is a moment he will remember forever, and foryears he will try to find her again. When he finally does, sheis by the side of his oldest brother and greatest rival.Set in a tumultuous and violent period of Taiwanese history — as the Chinese Nationalist Army lays claim to the islandand one autocracy replaces another—The Third Son tellsthe story of lives governed by the inheritance of family andthe legacy of culture, and of a young man determined to freehimself from both.In Saburo, author Julie Wu has created an extraordinarycharacter, a gentle soul forced to fight for everything he's ever wanted: food, an education, and his first love, Yoshiko. A sparkling, evocative debut, it will have readers cheering for this young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program.