This author has written three previous novels, "Flower net", "The interior", and "Dragon bones"; and a memoir, "On Gold Mountain". This current entertaining story is set in nineteenth century China when girls had their feet bound and spent the rest of their lives in seclusion, illiterate, and isolated. In one remote county, women developed their own secret code, "nu shu"---meaning "women's writing"---the only gender-based written language to be found extant in the world. A very imaginative, original story, by a gifted storyteller.