Love and Other Consolation Prizes

Love and Other Consolation Prizes is a 2017 historical novel by American author Jamie Ford. Based on a true story, it tracks the life of Ernest Young, born Yung Kun-ai to a Chinese mother and white missionary father. When Ernest is only five, his then-single mother sends him on a ship to America in the hopes that he will survive the brink of starvation. He struggles to assimilate in America, mostly because of many Americans’ unrelenting racism toward Asian Americans and general disdain for immigrants. Though Ernest never meets his father or reunites with his mother, he learns to survive and makes strong friendships as an orphan in the United States.

The novel alternates between Ernest’s childhood and late adult life. He is born in rural China at the turn of the twentieth century, to parents that do not stay together for long. One of Ernest’s earliest and most traumatic memories is the day when his mother suffocated his infant sister, knowing that the family would not otherwise survive, and that no one would help the family of a single mother due to the Chinese culture of shame. After losing his sister, Ernest becomes particularly sensitive to the suffering of women in a male-dominated society – a sensitivity that extends into adulthood. Gifting him a jade pin to remember her by, his mother uses what little money she has left to smuggle him aboard a ship to America. On the ship, he meets several other kids from China, as well as one girl from Japan. They learn that all of the girls will likely be sold into the sex trade. The ship’s crew tries to drown the boys because they have no similar use. After throwing them overboard inside burlap sacks, only Ernest survives, by using the jade pin as a knife.

Ernest washes ashore near Seattle and is taken in by Ms. Irvine. Proving less than altruistic, she tries to sell him off in a raffle at Seattle’s first World Fair. A rich brothel owner Madam Flora wins him. Ernest moves into the brothel, the Tenderloin, and is nurtured by Madam Flora in exchange for helping out around the property. He reunites with the Japanese girl, Fahn, whom he met on the ship; she now works for Madam Flora. He also befriends Madam Flora’s daughter, Maisie. He falls in love with both, but neither of them knows it. When Ernest is older, Madam Flora falls ill with syphilis. Madam Flora’s assistant, Miss Amber, exploits her confusion to sell off Maisie to a rich man, Louis J. Turnbull. They then travel to Germany, allegedly to get Madam Flora treatment; however, neither ever returns, and word comes back that Madam Flora has died. Maisie agrees to marry Louis Turnbull, choosing a life of luxury and marital bondage over the difficulties she might otherwise have to face.



Later, Ernest learns that Turnbull made much of his wealth by running the very fleet of sex trafficking ships on which he traveled to America and where many little boys were murdered. He finds that Turnbull routinely lies to the Chinese to make money off them in any way he can. Meanwhile, Fahn seeks a life free from the sex trade but finds that it is far less dignified than she believed. When she tries to leave her job, her employers refuse; instead, they give her poison and lock her in a room, giving her a chance to commit suicide. Rather than kill herself, Fahn uses the lit candle they gave her as a light source to start a fire, which burns the building down. Discovering her nude and traumatized, Ernest takes her to the Tenderloin. Not long after, Seattle’s new mayor shuts down the Tenderloin. Ernest becomes a chauffeur and starts a family with Fahn. They give birth to two children, Hanny and Juju.

Half a century later, Ernest and Fahn are in old age, and their children are well into adulthood. Juju now works as a reporter; one day, while reviewing old newspaper clippings, she finds one regarding a Chinese boy named Ernest who was sold at Seattle’s World Fair. After decades of silence, Ernest opens up to his children about his life story. Fahn has chronic amnesia and tragically is unable to recall it with him. Hanny, while working as a showgirl in Vegas, is engaged to a wealthy white man Rich. Fahn’s memory miraculously improves, and she casually tells Rich, upon first meeting him, that she used to be a prostitute, shocking her children as well. At the end of the novel, Fahn vanishes, leaving behind a note for Ernest telling him to go to Seattle’s Space Needle. There, Ernest finds Maisie instead of Fahn. Realizing that Fahn always thought he would have preferred to be with Maisie, Ernest finds Fahn in the Japanese Village and proposes to her. Maisie, Ernest, and Fahn are finally reunited. They attend Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair, the bicentennial anniversary of the one during which they first met.