Jeanette Ingold,
Paper Daughter
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

Ages  12 +

Award-winning YA novelist Jeanette Ingold sets her latest book in Seattle, alternating between the contemporary city and the Chinatown of the 1930’s. As Chinese-American teen Maggie Chen discovers her vocation during a 21st century summer internship at a local newspaper, she also uncovers surprising new information about her family history. In this part-mystery, part-family saga, readers learn much about the human toll taken by the Chinese Exclusion Act and will be inspired by Maggie’s courageous search.

Maggie’s internship begins while she and her mother are still in shock after the accidental death of Maggie’s father, respected newspaperman Steven Chen. Going through his papers, his only child realizes that his past held secrets. The plot follows her personal investigation of his background in tandem with her assignment at the paper. When a connection between the newspaper story and her father’s death is suspected, she’s transferred to another department. Meanwhile, she continues researching her father’s past, employing the meticulous process of investigative journalism that she’s learning at work.

Interspersed italicized chapters follow a young Chinese boy who immigrated decades earlier with false papers that declared him the son of a Chinese-American man in Seattle. The boy was one of the many “paper sons,” skirting the Chinese Exclusion Act. How these two first-person stories connect comprises one mystery in Ingold’s plot; the other traces the real reason Steven Chen died.

It’s sometimes a stretch for Ingold to bring her plot lines together, but the vivid, intimate account of life in Seattle’s Chinatown and the difficult history of Chinese-Americans there is poignant and revealing. Maggie Chen is a thoughtful, bright role model for contemporary teens. Her perseverance in finding the truth leads her to greater respect for her father and to the realization that her own future will follow in his admirable journalistic footsteps.

At the back of the book is an author’s note about the Chinese Exclusion Act. The beautifully designed book cover paper, a photograph of a pensive Chinese-American girl pictured against a muted graphic of the Seattle skyline and overlaid with a newsprint watermark, will draw in young readers to this worthwhile story.


Charlotte Richardson
December 2010