About the Book
Diamond Head is a sweeping debut from a young, powerful new voice in fiction that follows four generations of a wealthy shipping family whose rise and decline is riddled with secrets and tragic love.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Frank Leong, a fabulously wealthy shipping industrialist, moves his family from China to the island of Oahu. But something ancient follows the Leongs to Hawaii, haunting them. The fabled red string of fate, the cord that binds intended lovers, also punishes mistakes in love, passing a destructive knot down the family line.
When Frank Leong is murdered, his family is thrown into a perilous downward spiral. Left to rebuild in their patriarch's shadow, the surviving members of the Leong family try their hand at a new, ordinary life, vowing to bury their gilded past. Still, the island continues to whisper fragments of truth and chatter, until a letter arrives two decades later carrying a shattering confession.
Now the Leongs' survival rests with young Theresa, Frank Leong's only grandchild, eighteen and pregnant, the heir apparent to her ancestors' punishing knots.
Told through the eyes of the Leong's secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning the Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a breathtakingly powerful tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice, and miraculous hope.
About the Author :
Cecily Wong graduated from Barnard College, where the first pages of Diamond Head won the Peter S. Prescott Prize for Prose in 2010, judged by Elizabeth Strout, Caryl Philipps, and Malena Watrous. Chinese-Hawaiian herself, she was born on Oahu. She currently lives and writes in New York City.
Nancy Wu is an award-winning narrator who has worked in animation, television, theater, and film. Having lived and recorded all over the world, she is known for her vivid action/fantasy characters, accents, and bringing literature and nonfiction equally to life. A graduate of Amherst College with her master's degree in human rights, she is an avid Ashtanga yoga practitioner and rock climber. Born and raised in West Virginia, she currently resides in Boulder, Colorado. Samantha Quan is a graduate of the Graduate Acting Program at New York University. She has performed on stage in New York and regionally, including at the Ensemble Studio Theater and the Globe Theaters. Samantha presently resides in Los Angeles, where she works in film and television.
Angela Lin, an Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA degree in drama. A critically acclaimed actress, her credits include The Good Wife, Law & Order: SVU, and As the World Turns, among others.
Janet Song is an award-winning audiobook narrator. The recipient of multiple Earphones Awards, she was named one of Audiofile's Best Voices of 2008 for her narration of Haruki Murakami's After Dark and John Burnham Schwartz's The Commoner. She lives and works in Los Angeles as an actor on stage and screen and has appeared in The Bling Ring, Palo Alto, The Fosters, and Shameless. Emily Woo Zeller began her voice-over career by voicing animation in Asia. She returned to the United States in 2009 and found a natural fit as an audiobook narrator. Described by AudioFile magazine as doing "an extraordinary job of varying the voices in the dialogue without losing the intimacy of the story," Emily's multilingual, multicultural framework brings a particularly unique, clear-eyed, and intimate perspective into Asian American narratives. While she specializes in Asian American narratives, Emily's work spans a broad spectrum, including young adult fiction and such titles as The Whites of Their Eyes by Jill Lepore and The Sex Diaries Project by Arianne Cohen. She also narrated Gulp by Mary Roach, for which she won an AudioFile Earphones Award.
Review :
"Will hook readers from the first page and not let go until the final tragic secret is revealed...By skillfully weaving a murder mystery into the story, Wong keeps the pace moving, and the twist ending is a surprise...Reading groups and fans of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club will enjoy exploring Chinese Hawaiian history and culture with this lovely novel."
-- "Library Journal"
"Cecily Wong's lush debut novel hooked me in right away as it slowly unraveled the tangle of secrets the Leong family has kept for decades. Diamond Head is an intricate meditation on what is in our control and what is fate."
-- "Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You"
"A shimmering tapestry of secrets and betrayals, beautifully told through the eyes of the women of the wealthy Leong family. An eye-opening, poignant read set against the backdrop of Hawaii's rich history."
-- "Yangsze Choo, author of The Ghost Bride"
"A sweeping family saga in the tradition of Amy Tan. Told from multiple points of view and moving back and forth in time over several generations of the Leong family, the story centers on how people remain tied to one another...Wong perceptively captures her cast of characters and their setting."
-- "Publishers Weekly"
"In Diamond Head, Wong has crafted a delicate tower of mystery and history...Wong's prose is lyrical and nearly poetic...Lovely."
-- "New York Journal of Books"
"Ms. Wong's first novel is a vivid story of a family's journey over time. We live and breathe with her characters as we witness history shaping family and family creating its own history. Diamond Head is a jewel of a saga."
-- "Rebecca Wells, New York Times bestselling author of Ya Yas in Bloom"
"Rich and compelling...With keen insight, effused with sadness and hope, Diamond Head is an auspicious debut."
-- "Gail Tsukiyama, author of The Street of a Thousand Blossoms"
"The fate and fortunes of a Sino-Hawaiian family are altered by bad romantic choices...Wong's pellucid prose style keeps the pages turning...A promising debut."
-- "Kirkus Reviews"
"Wong's multigenerational Hawaiian saga of deception and loyalty evocatively captures the tightly controlled worlds of privilege and power."
-- "Booklist"
