This is an insightful and moving memoir of a woman who has lived in two worlds: old China and modern America. Born in 1929 to a wealthy family in China, her childhood memories revolve around four unconventional people: a mother possessed by a ghost, an aristocratic grandmother who was an opium addict, a flamboyant father and an elusive aunt. In the background was a mysterious grandfather, murdered at the age of thirty-nine, and a German microscope he left behind. Mei Liu's early life was marked by family tragedies and dark secrets, and harrowing tales of living under Japanese occupation and Communist rule.