Master Wu's Bride
Master Wu's Bride book cover

Master Wu's Bride

Paperback – February 21, 2016

Price
$15.24
Format
Paperback
Pages
318
Publisher
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1530156900
Dimensions
6 x 0.72 x 9 inches
Weight
15 ounces

Description

Edward C. Patterson has been writing novels, short fiction, poetry and drama his entire life, always seeking the emotional core of any story he tells. With his eighth novel, The Jade Owl, he combines an imaginative touch with his life long devotion to China and its history. He has earned an MA in Chinese History from Brooklyn College with further postgraduate work at Columbia University. A native of Brooklyn, NY, he has spent four decades as a soldier in the corporate world gaining insight into the human condition. He won the 2000 New Jersey Minority Achievement Award for his work in corporate diversity. Blending world travel experiences with a passion for story telling, his adventures continue as he works to permeate his reader's souls from an indelible wellspring. His novel No Irish Need Apply was named Book of the Month for June 2009 by Booz Allen Hamilton's Diversity Reading Organization. His Novel The Jade Owl was a finalist for The 2009 Rainbow Awards

Features & Highlights

  • It is Chi Lin’s wedding day – an exciting time for any bride, unless the groom has died before the ceremony and the ceremony, as per contract, must proceed. Chi Lin becomes the Fourth Wife – the ghost bride in the House of Wu, a respectable Ming Dynasty household. But to keep her honor, Chi Lin assumes her role under the stern command of her mother-in-law and the disdainful eye of the First Wife. Still, as Mistress Purple Sage, Chi Lin survives, managing to bring fresh breath into this ancient household. Women in Fourteenth Century China played a subservient role. Most accepted their lot and worked within a man’s world, supporting their husbands, revering their fathers and elders, and assuring their children followed the same dauntless path. Still, within the narrow confines of a subservient life, there was always a place to leave a mark and make a difference for the future. Master Wu’s Bride is a journey seen from a woman’s point of view — a woman who held secrets and cultivated them to everyone’s advantage. From yesterday’s stale cabbage, Chi Lin manages to cultivate her world to bloom. Come take this journey with Mistress Purple Sage, the ghost bride. Come take this journey that many women in a host of cultures still take today in the shadow of inequality’s quagmire.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
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(123)
★★★★
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★★★
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★★
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23%
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Most Helpful Reviews

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Interesting Story of One Woman's Rise from Exploitation to Influence

A historical novel set during the Ming Dynasty, "Master Wu's Bride" is the story of Chi Li, a young woman taken into the Wu household as a "ghost bride," the wife of someone who dies before the wedding can take place. As such she occupies a tenuous position somewhere between respected wife and lowly servant.

When we first meet Chi Li, she is unhappy about the marriage and acts in a fairly stereotypical "spunky heroine" fashion, meaning that she sulks and pouts and secretly does "boy" things; in this case, reading and writing. Since I consider this to be one of those tropes--and probably the most common of them--that are supposed to be empowering to women but in fact only serve to disempower them, I started off with only lukewarm feelings towards the book, but as Chi Li's character grew, so did my appreciation for her and for the story. She learns how to negotiate the byzantine and restrictive rules and interpersonal dynamics of her household and society, winning the respect of her superiors and eventually becoming a force to be reckoned with within both her family and her district. The traps around her are woven with skill, and her trials and tribulations become genuinely dramatic, so that by the latter half of the book I had a hard time putting it down.

The setting is described in a way to immerse Western readers in the society of medieval China without confusing them, and in this it succeeds admirably. Social customs, business practices, and native words are presented with a balance of closeness and estrangement that allows readers ignorant of these topics to have the sensation that they are learning new information about the culture without being overwhelmed by it. An interesting read about characters and customs that manage to be sympathetic and familiar despite their separation from their intended audience in both time and space.
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