Sunset on the Green Bricks

Novel Synopsis

Through the years of endless war, three generations of the Huangfu family never managed to share a single complete family reunion dinner.

The turmoil of the Republic of China era destroyed their ancestral hall, and the flames of war burned their land deeds to ash. Some fell beneath the invaders' bayonets; others vanished into the winds of a chaotic age. In the end, only a mother remained, struggling to keep her children alive.

She was the backbone of the Huangfu family. The upheaval stripped everything from her, leaving only the instinct to survive. She buried her husband's bones with her own hands. On the road as a refugee, she sold her long hair and knelt at her enemy's door for a mouthful of rice. But when her youngest daughter was dragged onto a truck by Japanese soldiers, this woman, silent all her life, raised a woodcutter's axe with fierce resolve. “The bloodline of my Huangfu family may starve or die in battle, but we will never be dragged away like livestock!”

This is one woman's resistance, and the awakening of a nation's backbone. From the ancestral home with its gray tiles and blue-brick walls to the bloody battlefield, the men of the Huangfu family risked their lives on the front lines to protect their homeland, while the women guarded their homes from the rear with blood and tears. As the wheels of history rolled over them, they became the hardest of bricks: they could be shattered, but never bent.

The history of the Huangfu family is a miniature history of modern China. Witness a steadfast mother bearing the weight of a turbulent age in the most humble way, and ordinary Chinese people turning their faith in life into a beacon that never goes out amid a shattered land.