Featured Image via: @yoon.reads

In this month’s Books On Your Radar, BookSparks’ founder Crystal Patriarche recommends a heart-pounding novel, one of those books that might just change the way you look at the world when you’re done reading. We recommend bumping this pick up to number one on your TBR list this month. 

Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

I read Four Treasures of the Sky in just one sitting, in one spot, from first page to last. This dazzling novel set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, about a Chinese girl fighting to claim her place in the 1880’s American West, is remarkable, beautiful, magical and devastating at all the same time. Daiyu is kidnapped and smuggled across the ocean from China to America. She is named for the tragic heroine revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak, but she never wanted to be like her namesake. However, now she must reimagine her future, moving from a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a hidden shop in the Idaho mountains, reinventing herself to survive year after year and figuring out how to outrun her constant companion: her tragedy. Which of her selves can she draw from, the good and bad, to finally find where she feels safe, confident, and at home?

Full of untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is so relevant and important in this moment, and every moment since the occurrences of the events it was based on. I hope it finds its way to as many readers as possible! I know I will be shouting about it from the rooftops.