"The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the West" by Christopher Corbett

[image error] I didn't realize when I got this that it was going to be straight-up nonfiction.  I thought it was going to be one of those books that tells a true story like a novel, what I call "biographical novels."  But it's not.  Instead of telling only the story of one Chinese woman who came to America, it uses her story as a focal point around which to tell the larger story of all Chinese immigration to the Old West.  Which I completely dug, once I understood the book's goal.

Corbett focuses on the life o...