Hanna and her father journey through the frontier west hoping to find a community in which they can establish themselves following the death of Hanna’s mother. With the forbidding prospect of a new town and new people who may well not accept her bi-racial heritage, Hanna draws on quiet memories of her Chinese mother’s resourcefulness when she and her father settle in LaForge in the Dakota Territory. In the shadow of the anti-Asian prejudice permeating 1880s western culture, Hanna’s father opens a home goods shop, his previous trade in California. Hanna had come to love assisting her mother with sewing and providing service to customers; she now longs to do the same, in her own right, alongside her father. Slowly she makes connections in the community—with her teacher, a classmate, and Wichapiwin, a Sioux woman who introduces her to a wild tuber for cooking. Slowly Hanna gains a self-assuredness that helps her weather the outright slurs and assaults of some of the townspeople. Resilient in the face of both racial and gender prejudice, Hanna finds her own success. In the historical novel Prairie Lotus, Linda Sue Park’s prose dances with immediacy, humor and plain-spoken perceptiveness, bringing alive for readers both a wonderful character and the bumpy road of our history. Ages 8-12.
