Two narrators relay a story in New York: Jasmine, an illegal immigrant, in debt to snakeheads for her escape from China; Rebecca, high-powered chief editor at B & W Publishing, who has an adopted young daughter, Fiona (Fifi). Jasmine fled her abusive husband Wen, an important official back in the homeland; she is desperate for a job to repay the snakeheads or they will force her into prostitution. Most importantly, she seeks the daughter deceitfully taken from her as a baby. Unknown to the adoptive parents, Fifi is Jasmine's daughter. Rebecca's devoted husband Brandon had connections enabling the Chinese adoption.
One of B & W's disgraced authors has hurt their sterling reputation, and it was Rebecca's fault. To compensate, she needs to win editorship of a new book by popular author Isabel Navarro. So the pressure is on for Rebecca, who is also experiencing domestic stress—Fifi prefers her nanny Lucy over her mother, and Brandon is acting out of character. On the other hand, Jasmine is reluctantly waitressing at Opium, a raucous Asian strip club, where she works in fear of how far she might have to ingratiate herself, with the men or with her employer. Also, this milieu holds potential discovery by Wen and his network; he lost face when she ran away. The surprise meeting with her oldest, dearest friend Anthony awakens tender feelings she can't afford to indulge.
There is one surprise after another in a fast-moving novel where each woman's chapters end with a cliffhanger. Either woman will do anything to protect Fifi, as violence and danger threaten all of them. When Brandon discovers who Jasmine is, their lives become an impossible situation. So well-constructed, great plot, great characters!
~ Due to my fumbling with the Kobo, the font became slightly enlarged, so it changed the total page numbers of the ebook. The numbers then became meaningless for quotes unless you had the exact same settings. I can say the quotes are in chronological order with the book. ~
Jasmine
▪ My eyes rested upon the man, but my soul recognized a boy I hadn't seen in ten years, my best friend when I was fourteen years old.
▪ My own parents essentially sold me to him, Anthony moved away, and now Grandma was ill.
▪ My darling, tender baby, who had snuggled her cheek against my hand, was being raised by foreigners who ate with knives at the table instead of chopsticks.
▪ I had used wood to put out the fire and now I was exactly where I'd most feared: in a nest of organized crime.
▪ I choked out the words. "My heart is taken."
▪ There he was: the linchpin, keeping all of us together, Wen.
Rebecca
▪ Looks, magnetism, and perceptiveness too: she won the jackpot with Brandon, as her mother never fails to remind her.
▪ There's the scandal at work, Lucy replacing her in Fifi's affections, and now her husband might be cheating on her.
▪ It's true, what people say, she realizes with wonder, that your children are parts of your soul walking around outside of you.
▪ How much had he known about the adoption?
▪ The momentum of her wrecked life is rushing downhill and although she's trying to hold it back with all her might, the mass crashes right into her.
Emiko Jean. The Return of Ellie Black. USA: Simon & Schuster, 2024.
My book choices are definitely into diversity these days. Detective Chelsey Calhoun, serving in a small police force in Washington state, had been an adoption from Japan, by a family with policing history. Her job is everything to her. When her father died, she inherited the lovely old home where she lives with her new husband Noah. The small town of Coldwell reels with astonishment when Elizabeth (Ellie) Black—missing for two years—is found stumbling in the woods: filthy, injured, and confused; apparently having been kept hostage, but now escaped from, an unidentified man in very grim conditions. The two years have changed her parents, Jimmy and Kat, through countless emotional stages. Jimmy was inconsolable that he couldn't protect his daughter; Kat continually questions her past parenting decisions.
Besides interviewing Ellie, Chelsey must see the parents, her friends, and others, to get a lead on who could have done this to her. Thus we follow Chelsey's investigation while Ellie's somewhat incoherent memory unspools in a separate thread, but she's not sharing it with anyone, refusing to cooperate with the police. Psychoanalyst Dr. Cerise Fischer also has little luck at drawing out the details of the dark two years. Teenaged Ellie had been a headstrong handful for her working class parents, not the most likeable girl. Chelsey traces the clothing Ellie was found in ‒ traced to another girl in the state who'd been abducted and later found strangled. Grief is no stranger to Chelsey who lost her adored sister Lydia in a horrendous car crash engineered by her boyfriend.
As Ellie's two-year plight becomes clearer, one feels a sense of perversion, of mental unhingement, in her captivity. Where was she hidden for so long? Is the relevance of Chelsey's sister valid? Is David's personality as improbable as it seems? The novel is not as compelling as it should be, nor somehow as powerful as it could be, regarding vulnerability and misogynistic abuse. To my mind, too much is unsaid about most of the characters and events.
Ellie
▪ I was a girl who wanted something and would go to great lengths to get it. (20)
▪ Withholding love was a power play. I had a mean streak a mile wide. (23)
▪ My limbs shook, and so did my voice. "My name. I don't remember it." (74)
▪ "I don't feel anything. It's like I'm wrapped in cellophane." (89)
▪ "There is nowhere for you to hide." He turned but kept talking, voice as steady as his pace. "If you run, I'll send the dogs after you." (101)
▪ "It's Queen Anne's lace," she said. "It will keep you from having a baby." (121)
▪ I thought it was dangerous to trust them. But I was wrong. They never should have trusted me. (143)
▪ "Sounds like you'd do anything for your sister." Ellie's voice is thick with tears. (206)
▪ Sometimes I wanted his affection. Sometimes I craved his kindness, yearned for him to look upon me as if I was a treasure he wanted to keep. (228)
Chelsey
▪ Ever since Ellie Black's disappearance, Chelsey has volunteered for any case involving violence against women. She always has plenty of work to do. (16)
▪ Without Ellie's participation, the ADA won't touch the case. There'd be no prosecution. (67)
▪ This is where she lives now. She is drawn to the shadows. Every case is personal. (113)
▪ Her death had sobered up the whole town. The Chief's daughter [Lydia] killed by Coldwell's golden boy. How could this have happened? (132)
▪ Now, Ellie is stonewalling her, lying to her. Now, they are opponents. (194)
▪ Piece by piece, Chelsey is being removed from the case. Untangled from Ellie's web. (238)
▪ Ellie is on the run. Alone. Confused. Afraid. Dr. Fischer says Ellie doesn't know who she is anymore. (238)
Aftermath
"It's not okay." The words roll out of her like a stomp of the foot. Everything is too jagged. Too sharp. "It's not okay, and it is never going to be okay. I sleep in a crawlspace. I carry around a rage that makes me want to hit people. I look for exits in every room I'm in; I make sure all the windows can be opened. I can't stand to be touched. I can't cut my fucking hair. And every time someone calls me Ellie, I want to tell them it's not my name. Where I was kept ... they called me Destiny." A pause. "I shouldn't have said that. Forget it." (190-1)
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