Thousand Pieces of Gold

Lalu Nathoy's father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his "e;thousand pieces of gold,"e; yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly, as Lalu is later called, is sold to a brothel, sold again to a slave merchant bound for America, auctioned to a saloonkeeper, and offered as a prize in a poker game. This biographical novel is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for independence and dignity in the American West.