Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-372).

Donaldina Cameron arrived at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895 intending to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants. She discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization-- the criminal tong-- brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Cameron becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade. Mei Lien believes she is sailing to the "Gold Mountain" in America to become the wife of a rich Chinese man. Instead she finds herself sold into prostitution: beaten, starved, and forced into an opium addiction. Will the mission home give her hope for a new life? -- adapted from jacket