King-Gamble, Marcia. Jade. Washington, D.C.: Sepia/BET Books, 2002.
The following is from the back cover of Jade:
In this moving, unforgettable family saga, Marcia King-Gamble introduces a remarkable
heroine in Jade, a bi-racial woman searching for the pieces of her past, who
finds the courage to love herself...
Exotic, beautiful Jade has everything for her: a wonderful job as a clothing designer,
an adoring boyfriend, and a chi-chi apartment on New York's West Side. But somehow, her
perfect life has left her feeling like a piece of her is missing. While sorting through
boxes of aged memorabilia in her adoptive parents' attic, Jade uncovers the startling truth
in papers reaching back through the years and across the ocean to Jade's real parents
— a teenaged Vietnamese mother and a black U.S. soldier. Feeling betrayed and lost,
Jade embarks on a journey of self-discovery that takes her to the war-scarred heart of
Ho Chi Minh City, with its sensual taxi girls, seedy hotels, and one unexpected surprise:
a tall, dark brother from Virginia guarding hurts of his own.
Cameron was just a child when his father went missing, and his mother's house remains a
virtual shrine to the long-lost POW. Now, the aspiring photojournalist is finally ready
to break his mother's dependency on him and move on with his life, and Jade is looking
more and more like his future.
Thrown together by circumstance, haunted by the echoes of the past, Jade and Cameron are
determined to discover the truth, even if the truth doesn't want to be found. It's a
quest that will challenge all they know about love and forgiveness, mothers and daughters,
fathers and sons, friends and lovers. But with each heartbreaking realization, Jade
uncovers the greatest truth of all — that the bonds of true family are more than
just blood: they are connections forged in the heart, where they can never be torn apart.
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