I don’t know when I last read a book that so beautifully weaves a fairy tale-like sense with all of the structure of a novel. Mockett’s debut presents three generations of women whose lives traverse a rural village in mid-century Japan to an antiques business in modern San Francisco to the small apartment-piano studios of Paris. Solid and surreal in equal measures, this book takes the reader on a quest to understand the family ancestry of Satomi, a highly gifted pianist whose mother tells her she is a Princess of the Moon and that the only way to be “safe in the world is to be fiercely, inarguably, and masterfully talented.”

At the novel’s opening, Satomi is a young girl being raised by a single mother whose past causes suspicion among the other women of the village. They are shunned from the public baths, but Satomi is a talented piano player who at a very young age wins piano competitions and respect. Eventually Satomi’s mother marries a man willing to pay for her daughter’s education and Satomi travels to Paris to continue her piano studies. A drastic decision leaves Satomi’s American-born daughter Rumi growing up with her father in San Francisco where she becomes a gifted authenticator of Asian antiques. The ghosts of her ancestors appear at night pushing Rumi to the mountainous northern regions of Japan where past and present merge. Mockett explores the question of what mothers and daughters really owe each other, but does so in a world full of Buddhist temples, black market antique dealing, and dusty Parisian salons.

I was literally swept away by this book--like slipping down a rabbit hole and savoring every moment of the adventure. Mockett is a gifted writer whose talent for fusing elements of magical realism with the groundedness of the traditional novel rewards the reader with an unusually beautiful and sensuous novel. ~Wendee