Publisher Description
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, “one of those special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot” (The New York Times Book Review), a moving novel about tradition, tea farming, and the bonds between mothers and daughters.
In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen.
The stranger’s arrival marks the first entrance of the modern world in the lives of the Akha people. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock—conceived with a man her parents consider a poor choice—she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city.
As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her insular village for an education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood, Haley wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.
A powerful story about circumstances, culture, and distance, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond of family.
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“Through Ruthie Ann Miles’ earnest narration, listeners are quickly drawn into a culturally complex and historically rich story…Multiple narrators give scope and varied characterizations to several scenes, but the bulk of the narration is done by Miles from the perspective of Li-Yan and by Kimiko Glenn as Hayley. See’s writing is evocative…and the cast serves to enhance her storytelling through spirited characterizations and a keen understanding of each person’s relation to the overall work. Ideal for fans of historical fiction, coming-of-age tales, and tea.”
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AudioFile
About the Narrators
Gabra Zackman is an actress, author, and narrator who has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. She was educated at Northwestern University. A classically trained actress, she has appeared in theaters all over the country as well as on film and television.
Jeremy Bobb is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and an accomplished actor whose film credits include The Knick, Godless, Mosaic, and The Wolf of Wall Street. He has performed in numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, including Is He Dead? and Cactus Flower.
Joy Osmanski, theater, television, and film actress, is an award-winning audiobook narrator who has won three AudioFile Earphones Awards. She graduated from Principia College with a degree in creative writing and received her MFA from UC San Diego.
Robin Miles, named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, has twice won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, an Audie Award for directing, and many Earphones Awards. Her film and television acting credits include The Last Days of Disco, Primary Colors, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order, New York Undercover, National Geographic’s Tales from the Wild, All My Children, and One Life to Live. She regularly gives seminars to members of SAG and AFTRA actors’ unions, and in 2005 she started Narration Arts Workshop in New York City, offering audiobook recording classes and coaching. She holds a BA degree in theater studies from Yale University, an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama, and a certificate from the British American Drama Academy in England.
Joe Bevilacqua, also known as Joe Bev, is a public radio producer and radio theater dramatist. However, his career has taken him into every aspect of show business, including stage, film, and television as a producer, director, writer, author, actor, journalist, documentarian, and even cartoonist. He is also a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City.