Unswept Graves

Unswept Graves combines adventure, history, and science fiction into a compelling story about a young girl who learns the value of her cultural and ancestral identity in the most unusual way.

The story starts in the present day in a small Nebraska town about to celebrate its annual Founders’ Day. The founders include young Jasmine Wu’s great-great-grandparents, Charlie and Hannah Fong. Jasmine and her friend Oz discover the full truth of the Fongs’ story when they are suddenly and magically transported by a mysterious pendant back in time to the Chinatown of San Francisco in the 1890s.

The late nineteenth century was a dangerous time to be Chinese in America, especially for young girls. Jasmine is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Oz dresses as a boy to stay safe while she works to find her friend and figure out how to rescue her and get her to the shelter of the Mission Home. Each of them meets Charlie Fong, who is not at all the man they expect, in part because his wife has already died childless, but also because he has no interest in moving to Nebraska. How can the girls get the past to change in the way it must to make sure that the future happens as it should?

The book’s title refers to the traditional Chinese festival of Ching Ming, or “Grave-Sweeping Day,” when families pay tribute to their ancestors and tend to their family gravesites. Author Robert Black says that his purpose in writing the book was

“to give readers a taste of what life used to be like—and an experience of being there. I hope, too, they will learn the same lessons that Jasmine learns during her trip to the past about the challenges and hardships Chinese immigrants had to face and the determination it took them to survive.”

Black’s research into the life of Chinese immigrants revealed shocking anti-Chinese prejudice in the U.S. at the time and also the dangerous work of rescuing slave girls by the Presbyterian Mission Home in San Francisco. The home still exists on Sacramento Street; it is now Cameron House, a Chinese community center.