Over the Sycamore by June Hayward

Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Title: Over the Sycamore 

Author: June Hayward

Publisher: Evermore 

Source book: Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang 

June Hayward puts her all into a book she had wanted to write since her childhood. It’s a richly detailed, subtly magical coming-of-age story about grief, loss and sisterhood. After trying nearly 50 literary agents June finally gets a deal with Evermore. Which folds just months before Over the Sycamore goes to print. Her new publisher seems to have forgotten she exists.

Athena Liu gets a good deal with Penguin Random House, her publishing rights are sold to 30 different territories, she’s featured in the New Yorker and The New York Times. Her debut novel, Voice and Echo is nominated for 4 different awards and wins two of them. June might be forgiven for being jealous.

Athena Liu, beautiful, successful, English-educated, Chinese, and author of 3 bestsellers with a great career ahead of her, dies suddenly in an accident. Boring, brown haired, brown eyed and not Chinese at all June Hayward comes by the manuscript Athena was working on. It’s the story of the 95,000 Chinese labourers who supported Britain in WWI. 

June appropriates the manuscript, tidies it up and passes it off as her own. She lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song who might or might not be be an Asian American, and there’s a misleading photograph to boot.

 I have yet to read the source book, and am relying on a string of reviews, but apparently Juniper Song’s book is intimidatingly good and June is shot to literary stardom. Does she get away with her big lie? Does she make The New York Times bestseller list? What do you think?

Thanks to paintingschinese.com