Welcome to Gatfest Reads for the Month of July.

I am thrilled to be here with Vanessa Hoa, who is the author of the book we are going

to talk about.

It is a novel called For Bidden City.

Hi, Vanessa.

Hi, thanks so much for having me on, Emily.

I'm so glad you're here.

I'm going to start by gushing a little bit.

I'm a total fan girl of yours.

You wrote a book called A River of Stars a few years ago that I thought was fabulous.

And that made me really excited to read this very intriguing novel.

So I wanted to start just to lay the groundwork just a little bit for listeners.

The main character's name is Mei.

She is a Chinese teenager from the country in China.

And she goes on a journey because she is recruited by the Communist Party to join a dance

troupe of girls who perform and really serve the male elite of the Communist Party.

The people who the girls are interacting with include Chairman Mao.

And so it is really the relationship between Mei and Chairman Mao, that is the focus

and spine of the book.

She gets caught up in a lot of palace intrigue and then in the tumbled in violence of the

beginning of the cultural revolution.

And so we see both Mao and these seismic events in Chinese history through her eyes.

...