Kintsugi, a work of auto-fiction by first-generation Chinese Canadian Ming Louie Stein, takes its title from the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the cracks with lacquer mixed with gold. It is an apt metaphor for the story of a so-called “worthless” daughter who reclaims her broken self and succeeds in finding new ways not to just live, but to thrive.

The story begins in February 1960: four-year-old Annuii is boarding a plane from Hong Kong to Vancouver, to join her parents, leaving behind her beloved Grandma Jong, with whom she’s lived for the past two years. After several chapters, the focus transitions back in time to the life of the grandmother, Mung Yee, and her marriage to Ah Tong. Mung Yee knows her husband is marrying her reluctantly out of obedience to his mother. They have two sons, Bing and Wai, and when the oldest, Bing, is 12, Ah Tong leaves her for the woman he’s been in love with all along. Fifteen years later she’s at the boarding gate saying goodbye to her granddaughter, Annuii, and in her late fifties she’s diagnosed with a terminal disease.

We then get the story of Lan Chau, Annuii’s maternal grandmother. Born in 1890, she’s one of the last generation of little girls to have her toes broken and bound to create the desired lotus-bud shape. I knew of this procedure–that is, I knew it happened, back in the day–but I’d never read a description of it and Stein’s writing brings it horrifyingly and painfully to life. By the time she’s 46, Lan Chau has given birth to eight children, three sons and five daughters; her eighth child is Shi-Na, Annuii’s mother.

Shi-Na’s story begins in Vancouver in 1968. Annuii is 12 and when her mother is in the mood to tell stories, she tells her about her childhood. She tells her daughter she didn’t want to marry Annuii’s father–she didn’t want to marry anybody. At the altar, she felt she was being handed a life sentence in prison. She often tells Annuii and her siblings that if it wasn’t for them, she would have left their father.

Shi-Na’s first child is a girl–a huge disappointment–“a worthless daughter”. This is the theme throughout the book: daughters are worthless. Their only value lies in their ability to bear sons. Shi-Na resents her husband for existing and, when her father dies shortly after Annuii’s birth, she resents her daughter as well. She sees the girl as a bad omen, which may partly explain her terrible treatment of her as time goes on. Because, in a world of bad mothers, Shi-Na is one of the worst.

In Chapter 15, when we suddenly return to Annuii’s story, the transition is jarring. And it’s here that I find my only real criticism of this fascinating–and important–book. Telling each story in the first person is extremely confusing, and I’m saying that as (full disclosure) one of the original editors of Kintsugi. It would have been an easier read to keep Annuii’s story in the first person and tell the other stories in third person. Instead we have four separate women all telling their stories directly to the reader, and switfching back and forth to different periods in time. The stories are well-told, and deeply compelling, but the difficulty of continually having to work out who’s doing the telling can sometimes detract from the narrative. It occurs to me that including a geneaological chart at the beginning would have helped–perhaps something to think about for a future edition.

Overall, Kintsugi is an astonishing debut. The characters are vividly portrayed and the dialogue, whether recalled from memory or crafted to fit the story, is expertly constructed. In the end, Stein has produced a story of hope, resilience, and transformation. I am truly in awe.

Kitsugi: A Woman: Worthless to Gold. By Ming Loui Stein. Kindle Direct Publishing, $25.00