{"product_id":"ursula-under-9780143035459","title":"Ursula, Under","description":"In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a dangerous rescue effort draws the ears and eyes of the entire country. A two-and-a-half-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft--\"the only sound is an astonished tiny intake of breath from Ursula as she goes down, like a penny into the slot of a bank, disappeared, gone.\" It is as if all hope for life on the planet is bound up in the rescue of this little girl, the first and only child of a young woman of Finnish extraction and her Chinese-American husband. One TV viewer following the action notes that the Wong family lives in a decrepit mobile home and wonders why all this time and money is being \"wasted on that half-breed trailer-trash kid.\" \u003cp\u003eIn response, the novel takes a breathtaking leap back in time to visit Ursula's most remarkable ancestors: a third-century-B.C. Chinese alchemist; an orphaned playmate of a seventeenth-century Swedish queen; Professor Alabaster Wong, a Chautauqua troupe lecturer (on exotic Chinese topics) traveling the Midwest at the end of the nineteenth century; her great-great-grandfather Jake Maki, who died at twenty-nine in a Michigan iron mine cave-in; and others whose richness and history are contained in the induplicable DNA of just one person--little Ursula Wong.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUrsula's story echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that her very existence--like ours--comes to seem a miracle. Ambitious and accomplished, \u003cb\u003eUrsula, Under\u003c\/b\u003e is, most of all, wonderfully entertaining--a daring saga of culture, history, and heredity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Penguin Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/28\/2005\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780143035459\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 512\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.94lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.02h x 5.30w x 1.12d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eIngram Advance\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/01\/2005 pg. 79\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Ingrid Hill","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43361399341237,"sku":"9780143035459","price":18.7,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_198d6997-c90a-4dad-aaa9-7097dd04fd4e.jpg?v=1701189506","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/ursula-under-9780143035459","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}