Clara remembers visiting Molihua Park when she was ten and Lola was eleven - more than a year before Lola's relapse. Clara is doubtful the consulate will help but she makes sure that her father makes copies of the photograph and the note. She is abrupt with Clara's father, Al and requests that he send the note and photograph to the embassy before hanging up on him. At Clara's urging he decides to call the Chinese consulate in Chicago where Susan Zhau takes his call and the information about the note and photograph. The note is written by thirteen-year-old Yuming Niantu who is a prisoner in a pink factory along with twenty-two other children and asks for help.Ĭlara's father can't imagine twenty-two children trapped in a factory making purses. Unbelievably the photograph is of Molihua Park in Shanghai where Clara and her family have visited and also where Lola was found as a baby. In an inside pocket Clara discovers a piece of white paper and a photograph. While waiting for her father to show up, Clara spots an ugly yellow purse on clearance and wondering why it's on sale looks inside,unzipping various pockets. They arrange to meet in twenty minutes but in the meantime Clara hides from Dahlia in a booth that has leather purses on display.
She hides from Dahlia and texts her father asking him to come pick her up. Since Lola's death on May 15, after her long battle with cancer, Clara feels disconnected from Dahlia. Clara decides she doesn't want stay with Dahlia and she tells her she's leaving. Their families met through an adoption support group because Dahlia and Clara's sister Lola were adopted from China. Clara has known Dahlia since they were babies. Unfortunately, Lola developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia and despite chemotherapy, she relapsed and died.Ĭlara's narrative opens with her being dropped off at Bellman's department store on July 1 with her "used-to-be best friend", Dahlia. Lola who was abandoned in a cardboard box in Molihua Park in Shanghai, was found by a man and taken to an orphanage where her birthday was estimated to be October 1. The novel opens with a copy of Yuming's note hidden in a purse on May 16 while she is working in a factory in Hebei Province, in China.Ĭlara and her parents are still grieving after the death of Clara's older sister Lola who was adopted from an orphanage in China. Their lives intersect in a way neither can ever imagine, tied together by the thread of one action. Threads is a parallel narrative, telling the stories of twelve-year-old Clara Clay who lives in Evanston, Illinois with her parents and thirteen-year-old Yuming Niantu who is an orphan in China.
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