The Golden Gate: A Novel

"Satisfyingly twisty, highly educational, and lots of fun.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Amy Chua’s debut novel, The Golden Gate, is a sweeping historical thriller that paints a vibrant portrait of a California buffeted by the crosswinds of a world at war and a society on the brink of massive change.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, 1944: Homicide detective Al Sullivan has just left the bar of the swanky Claremont Hotel when a charismatic presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan’s investigation summons the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco. Some say she haunts the Claremont still.

The tangled threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults: Iris’s stunning sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. But the heiresses are not the only ones with a stake in the outcome of Sullivan’s investigation. Berkeley’s ambitious district attorney, Wilkinson’s race-baiting political rivals, the heiresses’ formidable grandmother, and even China’s First Lady, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, each threaten the detective’s relentless search for the truth. As the web of violence spreads beyond the glittering walls of the hotel, Sullivan will risk everything to unearth secrets rooted in the darkest moments of California’s past—one that casts a shadow over his own ambiguous history.

Amy Chua’s page-turning fiction debut introduces a fascinating character in Detective Sullivan, a mixed-race former army officer who is still reckoning with his past. And in her vivid portrayal of a country at war, she conjures a historical era rife with turbulent social forces and groundbreaking forensic advances, when race and class defined the very essence of power, sex, and justice.

About the Author

AMY CHUA is the John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is an international bestselling author of several nonfiction titles, including her 2011 memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which was a runaway international bestseller that has been translated into more than thirty languages. Chua graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and cum laude from Harvard Law School. After practicing law at a Wall Street firm for a few years, she joined the Yale Law School faculty in 2001. The Golden Gate is her fiction debut.