In recent months I've become acquainted by email with a wonderful author, Lisa See. She is a writer of historical fiction and as chance would have it, she found one of my relatives in her research and gave her a small part in her novel Shanghai Girls. You see Lisa above (centre) and my late mother-in-law, Eleanora Garnett at the time she was a successful, self-made couturier in Manhattan. But a long period of Madame Garnett's life was lived in the Shanghai of the 1930s and 40s. Shanghai Girls mentions her as a famous businesswoman operating out of her shop in the opulent Sassoon House on the Bund in Shanghai. The female protagonists in the book purchased all their glamorous clothes from Madame Garnett. I became aware of Lisa See from daughter Jennifer who was reading the book. I read Shanghai Girls and then began a delightful email exchange with Lisa. I told her that this woman was real. I sent her photographs and Garnett’s own amazing story, and she has them on her website. In the follow up book Dreams of Joy she mentions Eleanora Garnett three times and thanks me graciously in her acknowledgments. This is Lisa's eighth book and I loved it, as I did the others. If you want to immerse yourself in the rich and engrossing history of Chinese-Caucasian women, their trials and adventures over the decades, you should begin with On Gold Mountain. Continue with the others and you will love Lisa See's highly developed characters and vivid story-telling. One of her books, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, has been adapted into a film directed by Wayne Wang and stars among others, Hugh Jackman. It is in the theatres now. The website is www.lisasee.com
