Four Treasures of the Sky is the magnificent debut novel by Jenny Tinghui Zang, and what a novel it is. The book follows the life of Daiyu, a young girl in the 1800s who is kidnapped from her ancestral home in China and brought to America to work as a prostitute. To survive Daiyu disguises herself as a man (not a spoiler) and flees to the American West, always looking behind her to see if her kidnappers have found her. It's in the west that she truly experiences anti-Asian sentiment when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 law is passed. (the first real law that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the US).
Descriptive language combined with historical events in the US combine to make this an epic novel. It's not a light read, but an important read as it parallels current events in the Unites States concerning Asian Americans.