Ursula, Under (Advanced Reading Copy/ARC)
by Hill, Ingrid
- Used
- Very Good
- Paperback
- first
- Condition
- Very Good
- Seller
-
Spokane Valley, Washington, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a dangerous rescue effort draws the ears and eyes of the entire country. A two-and-a-half-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft—"the only sound is an astonished tiny intake of breath from Ursula as she goes down, like a penny into the slot of a bank, disappeared, gone." It is as if all hope for life on the planet is bound up in the rescue of this little girl, the first and only child of a young woman of Finnish extraction and her Chinese-American husband. One TV viewer following the action notes that the Wong family lives in a decrepit mobile home and wonders why all this time and money is being "wasted on that half-breed trailer-trash kid." In response, the novel takes a breathtaking leap back in time to visit Ursula's most remarkable ancestors: a third-century-B.C. Chinese alchemist; an orphaned playmate of a seventeenth-century Swedish queen; Professor Alabaster Wong, a Chautauqua troupe lecturer (on exotic Chinese topics) traveling the Midwest at the end of the nineteenth century; her great-great-grandfather Jake Maki, who died at twenty-nine in a Michigan iron mine cave-in; and others whose richness and history are contained in the induplicable DNA of just one person—little Ursula Wong. Ursula's story echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that her very existence—like ours—comes to seem a miracle. Ambitious and accomplished, Ursula, Under is, most of all, wonderfully entertaining—a daring saga of culture, history, and heredity.
Reviews
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- gigabooks (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 253733
- Title
- Ursula, Under (Advanced Reading Copy/ARC)
- Author
- Hill, Ingrid
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Edition
- First Edition
- Publisher
- Algonquin Books
- Date Published
- 2004
Terms of Sale
gigabooks
About the Seller
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- VG
- Very Good condition can describe a used book that does show some small signs of wear - but no tears - on either binding or...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Reading Copy
- Indicates a book that is perfectly serviceable for reading. It may have a defect or damage. As such, reading copy is not a...
- Trade Paperback
- Used to indicate any paperback book that is larger than a mass-market paperback and is often more similar in size to a hardcover...