In Women of the Silk , Gail Tsukiyama takes her readers back to rural China in 1926, where a group of women form a sisterhood amidst the reeling machines that reverberate and clamour in a vast silk factory from dawn until dusk. Leading the first strike the village has ever seen, the young women use the strength of their ambition, dreams and friendship to achieve the freedom they could never have hoped for on their own. Tsukiyama’s graceful prose weaves the details of the silk work and Chinese village life into a story of miraculous courage and strength.