Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama

Pei is only a child when her father takes her from her rural Chinese village to work in the silk factory of a nearby town.  Considered too homely and headstrong to ever marry, the money she will earn will help support her parents since they have had no sons to care for them.  Confused and distraught at first, she soon realizes that her job in the factory has earned her a kind of freedom she would have never had as someone's wife.  The other girls in the factory soon become her new family with rules and traditions that bring to mind those of religious orders.  Her close friendships give Pei both the strength to  survive and insight to accept life in China as the 1930's brings big political and social changes. This is Tsukiyama's first book but still one of my favorites.  It is so rich in detail of a place and time so unlike here and now.  One wonders how many of the rigid traditional mores are still present in contemporary China and if such a sisterhood of the silk ever really existed.