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Summary:
As this riveting debut novel opens, Anna, the narrator, is living in a storybook world: exotic prewar Shanghai, with handsome young parents, wealth, and comfort.
When Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to California, her father stays behind, believing his connections and a little bit of luck will keep him safe.
Through Anna's vivid memories and her father's journals we learn of his fall from charismatic millionaire to tortured prisoner.
Awards:
The Distant Land of My Father was published in hardcover by Chronicle Books in October of 2001 and in paperback by Harcourt in September of 2002.
The book was a national bestseller, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, and a Booksense 76 pick. Foreign rights were sold to the U.K., the Netherlands, France, and Italy.
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Winners of the Gilroy Library/Silicon Valley Reads "Forgiveness" Writing Contest
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Winners of the Gilroy Library/Silicon Valley Reads “Forgiveness” Writing Contest pictured are (Left to right): Frances Guo (San Jose), Winner, Youth Category; Margo Wixsom (Santa Clara), Winner, Adult Category; Ashley Wu (Saratoga), Honorable Mention.
Other award recipients not pictured are: Honorable Mention: Juanita Joy Baker (Gilroy); Renee Gimelli (Hollister); Susan Gutrugianios (Gilroy); Renae Johnson (San Jose); and Cindy McCalmont (San Jose). Rachel Dukes-Schlossberg (Palo Alto) received a Special Mention.
In Winter of 2008 Gilroy Library invited regional writers to explore the theme of forgiveness in a short work of poetry, fiction or non-fiction.
Submissions were accepted from January 15 through March 22, 2008, with winners chosen by a panel of local judges.
A reception was held during National Library Week (April 13-19, 2008) and winning entries were read. We are now in the process of posting these entries online. |
Read the "Forgiveness" Writing Contest
Winners & Honorable or Special Mention entries,
Other Youth entries,
and Other Adult entries
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Distant Land of My Father author Bo Caldwell was born in Oklahoma City in 1955. She grew up in Los Angeles and attended Stanford University, where she later held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing and a Jones Lectureship in Creative Writing.
She has received a fellowship in literature from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council of Santa Clara County, and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation.
Her personal essays have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and America Magazine, and her short stories have been included in Story, Ploughshares, Epoch, and other literary journals.
She lives in Northern California.
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