LoveReading Says
A half-Chinese, half-Finnish, miracle child (as far as her parents are concerned) falls down a misused mineshaft. During the course of the rescue operations we are given some extraordinary stories from both sides of her family history, learning that it is indeed a miracle the child was born. The book is fascinating although lacking a little in energy, I felt, but what is really amazing is that the author has twelve children and still had time to write this, and it’s not a short book!
Comparison:
Amy Tan,
William Kowalski.
Similar this month:
Adele Geras,
Marya Hornbacher.
Reviewed by Sarah BroadhurstSarah Broadhurst spent her early working life in the book trade in both retail and wholesale until the arrival of children forced her to look for freelance work she could do from…
More reviews by Sarah Broadhurst About Ursula Under
A dangerous rescue attempt in Michigan has captured the attention of the entire country. A two-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft. Ursula Wong is the only child of a poor family and referred to by one member of the TV audience as 'half-breed trailer trash', not worth all the expense.
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Ursula Under Synopsis
A dangerous rescue attempt in Michigan has captured the attention of the entire country. A two-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft. Ursula Wong is the only child of a poor family and referred to by one member of the TV audience as 'half-breed trailer trash', not worth all the expense.
But Ursula is the last of her family line and her story explodes into a gorgeous saga of culture, history and heredity. Ursula's forebears include a second-century BC Chinese alchemist; an orphaned consort to a Swedish queen; and Ursula's great-great-grandfather, Jake Maki, a miner who died in a cave-in aged twenty-nine. Ursula's fate echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that any given individual's life comes to seem a miracle.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781784702137 |
| Publication date: |
27th July 2015 |
| Author: |
Ingrid Hill |
| Publisher: |
Vintage an imprint of Vintage Publishing |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
496 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Family Drama
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| Other Genres: |
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About Ingrid Hill
Ingrid Hill has this to say about herself.........
"I was born in New York City, spent my early childhood as a navy-brat gypsy, and then settled in New Orleans until I was grown. I've spent half my adult life in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and half in Iowa City, Iowa, both university communities, with a three-year stint in Washington State, on beautiful blue Puget Sound. I have spent some time in Sweden and some time in China. While my writing career was late in starting, I was raising my children and consciously garnering wisdom over this time: I remember in my high school Latin book a watercolored Roman matron named Cornelia saying of her children, in Latin of course, when asked to catalog her wealth and possessions, "THESE are my jewels." I feel the same way. I was left a single mom with eleven children, nine of them then still at home, got a fellowship to do a Ph.D. at Iowa, and came here to study. I remarried during graduate school and had my twelfth child. My maiden name was Hokanson, from my Swedish ship's-captain father; my married name, Hill, which is also my writing name, came from the Finnish "Sellakamaki," meaning "from the back hill," which was truncated to "Maki" and then anglicized to "Hill."
Photograph by Andrew Schmidt.
More About Ingrid Hill
