When six-year-old Taotao is sent by her mother to live with her grandparents, her whole world seems to have fallen apart. Only in later years does she learn of her mother's secret pain - her own father's fall from grace in the Cultural Revolution - and come to understand the sacrifice she has made for her daughter. STARTLING MOON looks back to a past of rich but suppressed tradition, and forward to a very different China. Above all, it is the story of Taotao's quest to know her own heart, and of the blossoming of a passion which will lead her to risk all that she holds dear.

Like so many of her young compatriots, Lili Lin lives on the margins of society–she has been jailed for “having a corrupt lifestyle and hooliganism,” and at 24 she is unemployable because she doesn’t have connections and unmarriageable because she isn’t a virgin. Estranged from her parents, restless and cynical, she drifts from day to day. Then she meets an American journalist infatuated with China, who gradually opens her eyes to what is happening. Together they embark on a journey that will profoundly change Lili’s view of her country and of herself.