Glamour UK Best New Books of June 2023 Pick 2023 Gold Book Award Winner - Nonfiction Book Awards 2023 Readers' Favorite Book Award 2023 PenCraft Book Award for Literary Excellence Once Our Lives is the true story of four generations of Chinese women and how their lives were threatened by powerful and cruel ancient traditions, historic upheavals, and a man whose fate - cursed by an ancient superstition - dramatically altered their destinies. The book takes the reader on an exotic journey filled with luxurious banquets, lost jewels, babies sold in opium dens, kidnappings by pirates, and a desperate flight from death in the desert - seen through the eyes of a man for whom the truth would spell disaster and a lonely, beautiful girl with three identities.