Skip to main content

Jamie Ford

Biography

Jamie Ford

Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Hoiping, China to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name Ford, thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 35 languages. Having grown up in Seattle, he now lives in Montana with his wife and a one-eyed pug.

Jamie Ford

Books by Jamie Ford

by Jamie Ford - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living. As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has truly come to haunt her. Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family. As painful recollections affect her present life, she discovers that trauma isn’t the only thing she’s inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period --- a stranger who’s loved her through all of her genetic memories.

by Jamie Ford - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a half-Chinese orphan, is raffled off at the 1909 World’s Fair. The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel, famous for educating her girls. There, Ernest becomes the new houseboy and befriends Maisie, the madam’s precocious daughter, and a bold scullery maid named Fahn. But as the grande dame succumbs to an occupational hazard and their world of finery begins to crumble, all three must grapple with hope, ambition and first love. Fifty years later, in the shadow of Seattle’s second World’s Fair, Ernest struggles to help his ailing wife reconcile who she once was with who she wanted to be, while trying to keep family secrets hidden from their grown-up daughters.

by Jamie Ford - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Twelve-year-old William Eng has lived at Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage ever since his mother’s listless body was carried away from their small apartment five years ago. On his birthday --- or rather, the day the nuns designate as his birthday --- William and the other orphans are taken to the historical Moore Theatre, where William glimpses an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that the movie star is his mother.
 

by Jamie Ford - Fiction

Set during one of the most volatile times in American history, HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET is a love story about two people who come from totally different worlds. Their story is about the conflicts between generations and cultures --- and how, decades later, they can heal the barriers and betrayals that separate them.