For as long as she can remember, Violet has believed herself to be American through and through. Her mother owns a courtesan house in Shanghai, and although they live in China, this has never prevented Violet from being certain of her heritage. When she finds out that she is actually half Chinese, it is devastating to her and she begins to doubt her identity. It doesn't help that she has never met her father; until the day when he visits her mother and tells her that it is now time to meet their son, who lives in San Francisco. Violet's mother immediately decides to move to San Francisco which immediately plants a seed of resentment within Violet that she really never gets over. She feels that her mother's decision to abandon their lives is the ultimate betrayal. In order to leave, Violet's mother needs to settle a debt owed to the Chinese Green Gang, and Violet is sold to a courtesan house.
It is at the courtesan house that Violet meets a man who used to frequent her mother's courtesan house. Loyalty Fang remembers her because he was once scratched by her cat. He purchases the rights to Violet's virginity, which leads Violet to surmise that he will want to marry her, but he does not, and when she questions him about this, he tells her that she nags too much and is also too interested in what he is doing, but he promises that he will be her friend for the rest of her life, living up to his name. Violet meets a man named Edward through Loyalty, and they have a daughter together, but they cannot get married because Edward is already married to somebody else. He had only married his wife because she had told him she was pregnant; she had told him she was pregnant in order to trick him into marrying her. Edward lists his wife on Flora's birth certificate as her mother which gives him the right to take Flora away from Violet and raise her as his own with his wife. Violet is devastated and vows to find a way to take back her child.
After Flora is ripped away from her, Violet begins to feel differently about her own mother. Suddenly she sees her mother's need to separate them and go in search of her son in a different light. She even contacts her mother and learns that she had actually been told that Violet was dead. Both women are glad to find each other again.
Loyalty eventually relents and marries Violet, and is also extremely supportive of her desire to get her daughter back. He begins to send gifts to Flora, but Edward and his wife never give them to her and so the situation remains static for quite some years, until Flora discovers the hidden gifts herself and finds out about the existence of her mother. She is reunited with her in Shanghai, and the meeting triggers some suppressed memories that Flora now realizes are of her time with her mother before Edward and Minerva took her away. Now that she has her daughter back, Violet begins to re-frame her life, seeing it less as a series of events that destroyed her and more of a life that makes her feel good because of the circumstances that she overcame.
