“He’ll do his best to see that we get a fair shake here,” he went on. “I’m figuring on giving it until fall. If the shop doesn’t do well, we can sell up and move on. There’ll be plenty of buyers, town right on the railroad and growing fast.”

Hanna nodded, more than satisfied. Until fall. That’s time enough for at least one, maybe even two terms of school.

As a young man, barely out of his teens, Papa had left his home in Tennessee to travel west, and eventually ended up in Colorado Territory during the Gold Rush near Pike’s Peak. He had worked hard and been lucky, doing very well for himself. When the rush was over, he took a job as a supplier for the railroad. He kept moving, finally reaching Los Angeles, where he couldn’t go any farther west, and set up as a trader dealing mostly in dry goods.

A year or so later, he met Mama, and they fell in love.

It should have been a simple story. But it wasn’t.

Because Mama was Chinese.

Orphaned as a toddler in China, Mama had been taken in by American missionaries. Her Chinese name was Mei Li; the missionaries called her May. They taught her to sew, and to read and write as well. She grew up entranced by their books and the stories of their homeland. When she was eighteen, she convinced them to let her make the journey to the land that was by then known as Gam Saan—Gold Mountain.

One of the missionaries had a sister who ran a boardinghouse in Los Angeles. That was where May stayed when she first arrived in America, with Miss Lorna. She cleaned house, helped with the meals, took in sewing.

Then a young man came to board at Miss Lorna’s place. He was setting up a dry-goods shop just outside Chinatown, and he needed a seamstress.

May went to work for the young man, whose name was Ben.

Papa.

The riots in Los Angeles happened when Hanna was five years old. By then they were living above the shop. She wasn’t old enough to understand, but she was plenty old enough to remember.

Shouts in the street.

Someone pounding on the door.

More shouting.

“Take her. To Miss Lorna’s,” Mama said to Papa.

“You go—you can both stay there,” Papa said.

“No. You. Safer with you.”

Papa held Hanna’s hand and pulled her through streets filled with people running, shouting, screaming. The air smelled strongly of smoke. Sometimes Papa picked her up and ran, dodging crowds of people who looked angry or frightened or both.

He left her with Miss Lorna. “I’ll be back for her as soon as I can,” he said, over Hanna’s head.

“I’ll keep her as long as you need,” Miss Lorna said. “You’re not to worry about her.”