The Third Son: A Novel

It’s 1943. As air-raid sirens blare in Japanese-occupied
Taiwan, eight-year-old Saburo walks through the peach
forests of Taoyuan. The least favored son of a Taiwanese
politician, Saburo is in no hurry to get home to the taunting
and abuse he suffers at the hands of his parents and older
brother. In the forest he meets Yoshiko, whose descriptions
of her loving family are to Saburo like a glimpse of paradise.
Meeting her is a moment he will remember forever, and for
years he will try to find her again. When he finally does, she
is by the side of his oldest brother and greatest rival.
Set in a tumultuous and violent period of Taiwanese history—
as the Chinese Nationalist Army lays claim to the island
and one autocracy replaces another—The Third Son tells
the story of lives governed by the inheritance of family and
the legacy of culture, and of a young man determined to free
himself from both.
In Saburo, author Julie Wu has created an extraordinary
character, a gentle soul forced to fight for everything he’s ever
wanted: food, an education, and his first love, Yoshiko. A sparkling, evocative debut, it will have readers cheering for this young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds,
finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program.