Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR’S CHOICE

A warm and witty memoir about the ever-changing relationships between mothers, mothers-in-law, and daughters that traverses two continents and multiple generations of two disparate yet connected families.

Janice Page hails from Braintree, Massachusetts and a large Catholic brood. Her parents had a complicated marriage. Her five siblings each have their own sagas, and there is a destructive genetic force within the family’s blood lines that causes much heartbreak.

And then there is the large Chinese family of Janice’s husband, James, equally cinematic and sweeping with a rich and complex history of its own. There is a daring wartime escape, a lost child, immigration to a new world, and a bittersweet reunion after decades of separation.

Janice first met James fresh out of college while waitressing at Mandarin Garden, the only Chinese restaurant of its kind in Braintree. He had just arrived in America from Taiwan. As they work to bridge the divide between them-emotionally, culturally, and geographically-they begin to build their lives together. From Taiwan to Los Angeles, from her mother’s bipolar disorder to the language barrier with her mother-in-law, Janice finds herself constantly searching for the feeling of home. Janice believes she can close the circle when she embarks on her own journey to become a mother. Like so many journeys, Janice’s own journey to motherhood is filled with twists, turns, and surprises, leading to a baby girl from James’s ancestral region of China. Janice and James might finally close a circle that had been open for generations on both sides and find home at last.

Filled with humor and heart, wisdom and healing, Year of the Water Horse is a profound and compelling story with a deeply satisfying ending that will resonate long after the final page.

Publisher Review

"Raised in a large chaotic family outside Boston, the journalist Janice Page recalls an eventful childhood and the love story that brought her to China and back again. Page is salty, blunt, and self-deprecating. The peace she experiences at the end of Year of the Water Horse is hard-earned, and a pleasure to share with its resilient author." -- The New York Times Book Review "Janice Page writes with wit and warmth about the process by which she and her husband completed their family with an adopted daughter from his family's ancestral region in China." -- The Boston Globe, Kate Tuttle "Washington Post editor Page reflects on family trauma and the ties that bind in her funny and affecting debut. Armed with sharp wit and bracing emotional intelligence, Page tackles heavy subjects with an admirably light touch, rendering each of her relatives in three dimensions and prompting readers to think deeply about the legacies they've inherited from their own families." -- Publishers Weekly "A gorgeously written, truly funny journey of a woman through womanhood-motherhood, wifehood, personhood, full on adulthood. Page's sentences are crafted with care and they glide along with insight and joy and the precision you would expect from such a serious writer, even when she is not serious. I laughed a lot! Year of the Water Horse is a joy to read." -- Julia Sweeney, actress, comedian, and author of If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother "In Year of the Water Horse, Janice Page deftly illuminates the power and weight of family history across generations and cultures. Page takes us through the deeply personal journey of adopting a child while navigating the complex landscape of both her own and her husband's family history. The author's desire to embrace but not repeat the past while creating a family of her own delivers a tender and resonant reckoning. Year of the Water Horse is a memoir that will leave you laughing through the tears." * A.M. Homes, author of The Mistress's Daughter, This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice and more *