Wang Jinhua, an old woman who had spent her whole life praying to Buddha and eating vegetarian, died peacefully of old age. When she opened her eyes again, she was astonished to find herself back in 1989!
Her eldest daughter, Yanfang, is pregnant with her first child, her smile gentle, unaware that in her previous life she died in childbirth.
Before her are four daughters and one son. Every one of them is kind, but every one is headed for a difficult fate. Her sons-in-law will be laid off, fall victim to scams, or lose their way in the tides of a changing era… The Wang family may seem harmonious, but undercurrents are already stirring.
Wang Jinhua rolls her prayer beads between her fingers, a sharp light of worldly insight flashing in her eyes.
In this life, this “Buddha” of a woman will be compassionate, but she’ll also show the wrathful face of a guardian deity.
Using “a dream from Buddha” to guide her children, she prepares for trouble before it comes: stockpiling grain before prices soar, planning for the future before the wave of layoffs, and making timely, decisive moves when business opportunities first appear.
She helps her timid son-in-law stand on his own, reins in her reckless daughter-in-law, and steers her kindhearted children toward paths better suited to them.
Yet as the family flourishes under her protection and drifts farther from every tragedy that befell them in her previous life, a buried question rises in her mind: Was this rebirth, in which she is “fulfilling her karmic merit,” a gift of heaven’s compassion, or… the result of some other cause and effect?
And could the scheming that occasionally flickers in the eyes of her seemingly meek second son-in-law be a hidden danger she failed to notice in her previous life?
In a turbulent age, she has a mother’s tender heart and the iron hand of thunder. Can Wang Jinhua lead her whole family past every hidden reef and bring them to a truly peaceful shore?
Good-looking, good-looking