And The Ancestors Sing
by Radha Lin Chaddah
Purchase on Amazon | Bookshop.org
ARC Review
Publisher: Rising Action Publishing Co. (Rising Action)
Pub Date: February 3, 2026
Content note: sexual violence, forced/underage marriage, sex work, violence.
What It’s About
And The Ancestors Sing is a multigenerational novel set in post–Cultural Revolution China. It follows families shaped by poverty, migration, and the kind of sacrifice that doesn’t always look heroic, but still changes everything.
The story begins in 1978 with Lei, married off and bartered into a life she didn’t choose. Later, it follows LuLu as she arrives in Shanghai determined to survive and help her family, even when the choices available to her are brutal.
This is a book about the way families fracture, endure, and stay connected across decades, often in ways the characters don’t fully understand until much later.
What Stuck With Me
I kept thinking about Dust Child and The Mountains Sing while reading this. Not because the stories are the same, but because the emotions they evoke are similar. The way history presses down on private lives. The way love and survival blur into the same thing.
This is a family-driven novel. It isn’t just about one woman’s suffering or one generation’s hardship. It’s about how pain travels through a family, and how resilience does too.
Lei was the character who pulled me in most. She’s quietly strong in the way that feels real. She knows when to step forward and when to stay back. She holds her family together without needing credit for it. She’s not written as perfect. She feels like a person who learned early that strength has to be practical.
LuLu goes through a lot as well, and her story is hard in a different way. She uses her body to survive. She makes choices that are complicated, and the book doesn’t punish her for them. But Lei stayed with me more. Lei felt like the emotional center.
The pacing worked. The writing worked. The setting details mattered. Nothing felt rushed, and nothing felt padded.
This is also not a book that tries to be “inspiring.” It’s steady. Resilient. It shows the ugliness without turning it into spectacle, and it shows survival without forcing hope where it doesn’t belong.
And the ending felt right. It wasn’t the kind of twist that feels cheap or engineered. It felt like, of course this is where it had to go. The best possible ending for the story it was telling.
Would I Recommend It
Yes.
If you like multigenerational novels, family-driven historical fiction, and stories about women navigating systems designed to limit them, this is worth your time.
I would recommend checking the content warnings before reading. Some of what happens is difficult, and while it isn’t written in graphic detail, it is present and it matters.
My takeaway
Some families survive history. Others get reshaped by it.
Thank you to Rising Action Publishing Co. and NetGalley for the digital review copy.
If you this this, you may also like:
Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, a multigenerational novel set in Vietnam, following a family shaped by war, loss, and long-held secrets.
The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, a sweeping family saga that traces Vietnamese history across generations through a grandmother and granddaughter’s intertwined lives.
