Thousand Pieces of Gold by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

I heard Ruthanne Lum McCunn speak at the Women on Writing conference on my birthday as well and read this book that weekend. I had just kind of vaguely heard of her but the book really intrigued me.
It's a fictional telling of a historical story - a Chinese girl is sold into slavery by her father (even though she is his precious "thousand pieces of gold).
She eventually ends up traveling to America and apparently pretty narrowly escaping having to work as a prostitute. One of the men in the small mining town where she ends up in Oregon befriends her, helps her start up her own boarding house business, and eventually they fall in love.
It was very sweet how their relationship is described, and I did really enjoy the story, but I was almost surprised that there was not more happening in the last half of the book.

It's also a bit horrible to think of but I was almost thinking that Polly's experiences before she met Charlie would be even worse than they were. I think maybe the writing even in the beginning lacks some drama, Polly is really going through some hard events but it doesn't hit me as viscerally as some other works.
I did enjoy the book though, it was a pretty relatively fast read and interesting to hear McCunn talk about the research she did to write the book.