Gemma Media 2013
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Tiger Girl
Nea Chhim, the indomitable heroine of Dragon Chica, is struggling in college as nightmares of war intertwine with her waking memories. A 19-year-old Cambodian survivor of the Killing Fields, Nea decides she must confront the past to overcome her fear. Without telling the truth to "Ma," the woman who has raised her in Nebraska, she hops on a cross-country bus to find her biological father in Southern California. There Nea comes face to face with a man beset by survivor's guilt who refuses to acknowledge the family's secrets. Nea decides to revive his struggling donut shop and ends up attracting a mysterious young man who may be casing the shop for a gang. It is up to Nea to find out the truth: about her family, the war that nearly destroyed them, and herself.
Tiger Girl weaves together Cambodian myths and folklore with contemporary American life to create an unforgettable novel about love, war, and acceptance.
Kirkus Reviews:
[A] quietly powerful sequel to Chai's Dragon Chica.
Readers need not have read the previous book to understand this story of family, forgiveness and belonging, and it provides a jumping-off point for further reading about Cambodian history.
Claire LaZebnik, author of If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now and Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts:
Like many of her characters, May-lee Chai is a masterful storyteller with a poignant and gripping tale to tell. I couldn't put Tiger Girl down: I wanted to know what was going to happen next of course, but I also wanted to learn more about the past, to understand the painful and astonishing paths that led these people to find one another. Her book travels far and wide, but in the end it's about families -- not just the ones we're born into but also the ones we make for ourselves. It's enthralling and moving and fascinating and absolutely wonderful.
Linda Hogan, author of The Book of Medicines and Indios:
An original storyteller writing a book about the need for a young woman's love, her cross-country journey that is also an inner journey, and her surviving, with others, a life they weren't meant to survive. This is their story. I couldn't stop reading. This is a writer to follow on her own journey of words.