“Not since Virginia Woolf have the snares and scars of familial relationships been rendered with such brilliance, sensitivity, and icy understatement.”
—Ron Hansen
An Empire of Women
Talented, stong-willed, unabashedly exotic, three generations of Arneaux women share a passion for the arts and their Sino-French roots, yet rarely agree on anything. Then a child enters their lives, whose future is theirs to decide, and their family myths are forever transformed.
The story captures the reunion of Celine Arneaux, a famous French-Chinese photographer, with her Asian-American daughter and granddaughter. The setting is a family cabin in Viginia, where Celine once photographed her granddaughter, Cameron, for a scandalous series of child portraits. Squeezed between grandmother and granddaughter is Cameron’s emotionally displaced mother, Sumin. Joining them at the cabin are two outsiders: Sumin’s lover, Grady, a journalist who has been assigned to write a profile of Celine; and Alice, an appealing and poised six-year-old Chinese girl temporarily entrusted to Cameron. To each of the adults, Alice represents a fresh chance, a chance to be less self-absorbed than each had been in the past. But the chance to decide Alice’s future also unleashes a ruthlessness that has marked the family’s history since the Cultural Revolution, and forces exposure of a long-buried secret.
In An Empire of Women, Karen Shepard weaves with wonderful artistry and suspense a captivating tale of custody, collaboration, and the ferocity with which we sometimes sacrifice loved onces to gain own ends.