Eight Arms Reading Room

Finished: The Girl Who Wrote In Silk by Kelli Estes

(Terrible title, obviously the publisher’s pick, to capitalize on all the other Girl Who… titles out there.)

My friend, Carrie, who I go to Port Townsend with regularly, suggested this book to me. It’s nominally a romance, though I think it fits more in the women’s fiction genre than true romance, and it’s M/F, which is not my go-to pairing much these days. But it’s set mostly on Orcas Island, one of the islands in the San Juan archipelago in Washington and a chapter or two takes place in Port Townsend and it’s about Washington history, so she thought of me.

I liked it. It alternates the point of view between Inara, who just inherited her aunt’s big house on Orcas Island and is trying to turn it into a luxury hotel, and Mei Lien, a Chinese-American girl who lived in Seattle in 1886. In the novel, the Chinese population is run out of Seattle, forced onto a ship, and told they’re being resettled in San Francisco. They’re not, though—the captain of the boat tosses everyone overboard and Mei Lien is the only survivor.

She’s rescued by a white man on Orcas, and they fall in love and marry (in Port Townsend) and Mei Lien embroiders the tragic story of what happened to her, her family, and the other Chinese on a silk robe. She hides the sleeve of the robe under a step in the house Inara inherits and the book alternates between Mei Lien’s life and Inara’s efforts to figure out the sleeve’s origins and how it relates to her family history.

The romance is a little predictable (especially the third act breakup you can see coming a mile away) and it’s fade-to-black, but I liked the characters and the story and I’m always up for Washington state history and historical fiction.