FICTION

WOMEN OF THE SILK by Gail Tsukiyama (St. Martin’s Press: $18.95; 276 pp.). The year is 1919 and the setting is a village in China. Pei is the younger daughter of an impoverished couple. Unable to make ends meet, her father consults a fortune teller and comes to the decision that Pei must be sent to work in a distant silk factory. After the shock of being left behind in the strange new place, the child’s innate curiosity and intelligence carry her through the difficult days of starting her new life as a laborer. The money she earns goes to support her family. Bright, spirited and eager for life, she becomes friends with the other girls in her factory and makes the best of her fate. Her story is full of understanding. The limitations of the society that envelops Pei are presented in a beautifully natural way, and without censure, as Pei herself would have experienced them.