Strangers of the Same Root Four Passports, One Broken Genealogy

Four passports. Four women. One family history that was never meant to be forgotten.

In 1949, as the Chinese Civil War drew to a close, history tore a Hakka family apart. Three brothers and a cousin were scattered across Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mainland China-each carrying a piece of a family that might never be whole again.

They carried little with them. A key to an ancestral house. A family genealogy. An old metal bracelet. And memories too painful, or too dangerous, to explain.

For decades, their descendants grew up with different names, different nationalities, and different versions of the past. Some stories were preserved. Others were buried in silence.

Then, in contemporary North America, the lives of four young women begin to intersect.

At first, they seem to have little in common. But as fragments of the past resurface, unexpected connections emerge-through inherited objects, family letters, forgotten memories, and a genealogy broken by history.

What binds them is more than blood. It is a legacy of impossible choices, sacrifices made for survival, and questions left unanswered for generations.

As each woman begins to uncover the truth, she must confront a difficult possibility: the family story she inherited may not be the whole story.

Can a family divided by war, borders, generations, and silence ever find its way back to itself?

Strangers of the Same Root: Four Passports, One Broken Genealogy is a sweeping, emotionally resonant literary family saga spanning Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, and the United States.

A story of separation and reunion, inherited memory, and the enduring search for home-and of the invisible ties that connect us, even when history has pulled us worlds apart.