They arrange a marriage for her to a young widow from California. The main characters family has fallen onto hard time due to war and famine. This one starts in southern China in the Guangdong province and the city of Guangzhou-what Westerners called Canton. I knew little about the reconstruction period, so it has been interesting-and painful-to learn about the laws and practices that were put in place by the owning class to continue to get low and reduced price labor. Mustard Seed was a natural outgrowth of my interest in what happen to Lisbeth and Mattie after the war. I hope I've written an honest story with compassion. I wanted to know what happened to that young man and his family. I imagined a scene in hospital room with a young, Evangelical Christian confiding in his sister that he had attempted suicide because he could not live with the shame of telling his parents that he was gay. Living Right, my second novel, also popped into my head.

I hope you will come to love these characters as much as I have.

For my fortieth birthday, I began the personal marathon of writing my first novel. Though I had never written anything, I was being called to tell this story. Then I imagined what the experience would be like for Miss Anne, the birth mother, to have her own child twist away from her to get into Mattie's arms. I wondered how it would feel for Mattie to be forced to abandon Samuel, her own child, in the slave Quarters. I thought about what it would be like for Lisbeth to dearly love Mattie and then be taught by society that she wasn't a full person. Then the image of Lisbeth, a white baby, breastfeeding in the loving arms of Mattie, an enslaved wetnurse came to me in a flash. It's a basic part of the attachment process.' You form your core identity in relationship to your primary caregivers. I thought to myself, 'Of course he does, his mother is Asian. The idea for Yellow Crocus was planted in 1998 when someone mentioned that Tiger Woods identifies as much as an Asian person as an African-American person. I was stunned when the writing bug bit me. The only reason I started writing was to get this story into the world! But I was glad to hear my writing wasn't horrific :). When I finished Yellow Crocus agent after agent and editor after editor told me essentially, 'Great writing, but nobody wants to read this story.' At that time it was at once heartening and heartbreaking. I continue to be surprised and grateful to be full time writer.

Yellow crocus by laila ibrahim