Empire of Heaven | Asian American Bookview

Empire of Heaven
by Linda Ching Sledge
Bantam, New York, 1990, 618pp, $6.95 (Paperback)
An epic of the Taiping Rebellion in nineteenth-century China. Notable for being one of few American authors of Asian historical fiction featuring Asian main characters.
EXCERPT:

here is your mother, child?" croaked the old woman outside the door. A torch's flame coiled and hissed about the gray head, lighting her eyes with fire.
     Was this the headman's wife, or a cunning kuei, a demon, who had eaten the spirit of that old, dry stick and now was hungry for new flesh? Rulan wondered.
     The night world was full of demons: weasel spirits, water demons, fox-spirits, ku-creatures, drowned girl-ghosts. Rulan tried to clear her throat and spit, because spit warded off small demons, but her mouth was dry.
     The crone thumped her fist against the door. Desperately, the girl wound the jute thong around the wall peg one more time, praying that it wouldn't break under the hag's pounding. A crimson stain of light flowed through the crack in the door and across the earthen floor as Rulan backed away into the rear chamber of the two-room hut. Dry, spidery branches of herbs hanging from the rafters caught in the girl's long hair.

"Little Stupid!" called the crone. "Move your big feet faster. The strange in the clan hall is possessed. I saw him crawling on the floor like a snake. The headman wants your mother--now!" the old woman screeched. Her red mouth agape at the narrow door opening, she howled like a dead soul at the River of No Hope. "Ailan! Sister-in-Law! Come at once!" she addressed the girl's mother. "If the stranger dies from the demon, then our clan is undone. His people will demand compensation, turn us in to the Punti officials at the county seat, spread lies about us among all the villages. Then what will our clan do for shame?"
"Mother! An evil one," Rulan whispered to Ailan.

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