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Chapter One: The Return
The ferry crossing from Seattle to San Juan Island took ninety minutes, and Grace Lin spent every one of them dreading her arrival.
She stood on the deck, salt wind whipping her hair, watching the dark water churn below. Five years. Five years since she'd left this island, left the pearl farm, left everything behind to pursue her PhD in marine biology at UC San Diego. Five years of telling herself she'd never come back.
And now she was coming back.
Her phone buzzed with a text from her father: 船快到了嗎? (Is the boat almost here?)
Yes, she typed back. 二十分鐘. (Twenty minutes.)
The island came into view—dense forests giving way to rocky beaches, small harbors dotted with fishing boats. San Juan Island had always felt like the edge of the world to Grace, caught between the Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea, neither fully American nor fully influenced by the Canadian islands visible on clear days.
Her family's pearl farm was on the northwestern shore, in a protected bay that had been cultivated by her grandmother's family for three generations. Lin Pearl Farm—modest, traditional, struggling to compete with larger operations and cheaper imported pearls.
Her father's stroke two months ago had been mild, but enough. Enough to make it clear he couldn't run the farm alone anymore. Enough to bring Grace home, even though every cell in her body had screamed against it.
The ferry docked, and Grace grabbed her single suitcase—a depressing summation of her life. Everything else was in storage in San Diego, waiting for her to figure out what came next. Her postdoc position had ended, academic jobs were scarce, and when her father had called asking for help, she'd had no good excuse to say no.
She spotted him immediately—her father, smaller than she remembered, leaning heavily on a cane. Her chest tightened with guilt and grief.
"爸," she said, reaching him. (Dad.)
"女兒." (Daughter.) He pulled her into a brief, awkward hug—affection wasn't his strong suit. "你瘦了." (You're too thin.)
"I'm fine. How are you feeling?"
"老了." (Old.) He gestured toward his truck, a battered Ford that was older than Grace. "Come. 我做了晚飯." (I made dinner.)
The drive to the farm took fifteen minutes along winding coastal roads. Grace watched the landscape pass—the familiar trees, the glimpses of rocky shore, the small farms and acreages where locals lived their quiet lives. Nothing had changed. That was the problem with islands—they existed in their own time, resistant to the progress happening on the mainland.
The farmhouse looked smaller than Grace remembered. The paint was peeling, one of the porch railings was broken, and the greenhouses where they cultured the oysters looked like they needed serious repairs.
"爸," Grace said carefully. "How bad is it?"
Her...
Jade Chen grew up between two worlds—attending Chinese school on weekends while binge-watching K-dramas at night. As a second-generation Chinese-American, she spent years as a cultural consultant in Hollywood, frustrated by the lack of authentic Asian representation in romance. From her loft in Los Angeles' Koreatown, Jade writes the stories she never saw growing up: Asian characters with rich inner lives, cultural authenticity, and unapologetic sexuality. Her work celebrates food as love language, explores diaspora identity, and centers Asian women as romantic and sexual protagonists.
