13 October 2012 THE FIRE HORSE GIRL by Kay Honeyman, Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, January 2013, 336p., ISBN: 978-0-545-40310-8

“I was not ignorant of how ridiculous I seemed to people.  My feet wandered the village with little purpose other than my own pleasure, my mind constructed ideas that no one seemed to understand, and my heart held hopes that were far beyond my reach.  But I could not help my thoughts or my dreams.  I watched the wind lead the leaves in a dance, and I wondered if any of them ever wished they could find their own steps.”

One might well imagine these thoughts and dreams belonging to one of those restless American kids who gratefully found their way from Middle America to San Francisco in the sixties.  But guess again.

Jade Moon is a Chinese teen who was born back in 1906 which, according to Chinese astrology, makes her a fire horse.  The word is that girls born in a Year of the Horse are bad enough – they are known for being tempestuous, stubborn, and selfish – but girls born in a Fire/Horse year (which happens once every sixty years) are reputed to be a particularly dangerous breed. 

Now seventeen, Jade Moon began building her bad luck reputation as a fire horse girl back at the moment she took her very first breath – which came at the same time that the mother birthing her was drawing her own last breath.  The little Chinese village in which Jade Moon has since grown up with her father and grandfather has been far too small for all of her questions and attitudes, along with her current disdain over possibly being married off to the village bricklayer.

But, fortunately, out of nowhere appears the good-looking adopted son of the paternal uncle she never knew she had – actually, the now-deceased paternal uncle she never knew she had.  And he, her adopted cousin Sterling Promise, has absconded with legal papers from his late adoptive father that can theoretically be used for Jade Moon’s father to get into the United States (if he assumes his dead brother’s identity).  He – Jade Moon’s dad – reluctantly works out a deal with Sterling Promise in which the three of them are going to travel from Hong Kong to San Francisco and live in America – if they can all get their stories straight and make it through the line of legal roadblocks erected against Chinese immigrants in those days. 

Throw in an ocean crossing, an extended stint under guard on Angel Island, and a triple-dose of betrayal, and you have the tale of one spirited girl clawing her way to a new life in America.

“The guard jerked his arm away from Sterling Promise and pointed to the barracks.  Sterling Promise shook his head and continued to dig in his bag.  I had never seen him so angry.  I had finally knocked off the polish that coated his actions.  It did not feel as good as I imagined it would.

“The guards grabbed Sterling Promise and started to drag him down the path.  Suddenly, he stopped fighting with them.  When his arm fell to his side, it was clutching the clothes I had left in his bag.

“Maybe now he understood.”

So begins Jade Moon’s dizzying and dangerous romp through the alleyways and organized crime venues of 1920s San Francisco Chinatown – disguised as a young man.   

I’ve always gotten a thrill out of wandering around S.F. Chinatown – gazing up at the apartments above the busy streets and down the alleyways leading in and out of those streets.  It remains for me a place of mystery and imagination.  This story for middle school audiences – part thriller, part dark history, part cute romance – provides quite a taste of those streets (and what lay behind them) nearly one hundred years ago. 

Richie Partington, MLIS
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