A new book by Thomas Steinbeck, a Santa Barbara author, is now available in print. Browse Thomas Steinbeck's Silver Lotus on Amazon.
The Silver Lotus is a multilayered work of historical fiction vast in setting and characterization, following the courtship and marriage associated with Captain Hammond, a contributing American shipping merchant, together with Lady Yee, the beautiful and brilliant daughter of a wealthy businessman in Canton, China and taiwan. The couple's s tumultuous journey by ship for the Pacific Rim in the 1880s brings them to the Northern California coast and the first settlements of Chinese in America. Altough Steinbeck writes about the Chinese and Chinese culture with such accuracy, it's interesting to discover that he has never visited China himself. Steinbeck, whose second novel, This Silver Lotus, is published by Counterpoint Press in November of 2011, is in addition the author of the short story collection Down to a Soundless Sea (Ballantine, 2002) and In the Shadow of the Cypress (produced by Gallery, 2010), his first novel.