The novel relates the struggles of a woman that comes from an immigrant family, who is trying to balance her modern life and choices that she made with the looming disapproval of her mother and the memory of the cold relationship they had while Ruth was growing up.
At the surface level, the novel explores this complicated mother-daughter relationship. Ruth is now forced to go back to live with her distant and cold mother because of her ongoing decline from dementia. Stricken with the need to find some form of connection with her mother, which in turn, will balance her life and help her move forward at the end, she decides to get a hold of the words/confession written to her by her mother.
Here we get to the story within the story, the intertextuality of the novel, and discover Lu Ling’s story. In this part of the novel, some deeper themes are explored. Traditional values in the rural part of the China in the past are shown through this story, as well as the cruelty and unfairness of the class system. The effects and dangers of superstition are shown, which push Lu Ling out of her home and the only life that she’d known, into the unknown and dangerous world, which eventually creates a path to America.
The ending shows the strain that the lack of knowledge about her mother and her past, has on Ruth, forcing her to hide, metaphorically and literally, behind her pen as a ghostwriter. That is why it is significant that she finally decided to put her own name on her work at the end.
