STRANGERS OF THE SAME ROOT

Four passports. Four women. One family history spanning seventy-four years. In 1949, as the Chinese Civil War drew to a close, history tore a Hakka family apart. Three brothers and a cousin were scattered across Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—each carrying a piece of a family that might never be whole again. Across three generations, from 1949 to 2023, their descendants would grow up under different flags, with different names, nationalities, and versions of the past. A key to an ancestral house. A broken family genealogy. An old silver bracelet. These seemingly ordinary objects carry memories of separation, sacrifice, and secrets buried by history. Decades later, in North America, the lives of four young women begin to intersect. At first, they seem to have little in common. But as fragments of the past resurface, unexpected connections emerge—through inherited objects, family letters, forgotten memories, and a genealogy fractured by war and time. What binds them is more than blood. It is a legacy of impossible choices, sacrifices made for survival, and questions left unanswered for generations. As each woman begins to uncover the truth, she must confront a difficult possibility: the family story she inherited may not be the whole story. Can a family divided by war, borders, generations, and silence ever find its way back to itself? Strangers of the Same Root: Four Passports, One Broken Genealogy is a sweeping, emotionally resonant literary family saga spanning seventy-four years and multiple generations, from the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War to the twenty-first century. Moving between Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, and the United States, it is a story of separation and reunion, inherited memory, and the enduring search for home—and of the invisible ties that connect us, even when history has pulled us worlds apart.