Silk and Sensibility

Two sisters with conflicting attitudes on passion and restraint must each choose between the traditions that bind their hearts and pursuing the love that could save them.

Sense and Sensibility meets Ming-dynasty China in this sweeping romantic retelling of love, duty, and sisterhood.

Nineteen-year-old Ailin is torn between duty and desire. Following her father's death, her family must rely on the wealthy Jiang clan for financial survival. Though Ailin knows she must marry strategically to help her family, her heart has already been captured by the poor but gentle scholar Enze. When his family opposes their union, Ailin knows she must hide her feelings from everyone until she can strengthen her dowry and stand on her own terms.

Meilin encourages her older sister to fight for her personal desires, but Meilin's romantic ideals conflict with Ailin's devotion to duty. Meilin believes in being honest about one's feelings regardless of what others may think, and she unabashedly pursues a charming playwright while also clashing with a frustratingly handsome but gruff army captain.

Each sister would do anything to help the other find happiness, but their assumptions about restraint and passion are as different as earth and sky. Ailin feels honor bound to her family yet is unable to deny her love for Enze, even as circumstances push them further apart, while Meilin grapples with unexpected feelings for Captain Bai and societal restrictions that leave little room for her own hopes.

Silk and Sensibility explores the delicate cultural expectations of womanhood in historical China by following two sisters who must learn to balance loyalty and longing, courage and constraint, to claim their own happiness.

Mengxi Seeley is a 1.5-generation-immigrant born in China and raised in Utah. After earning a BA in International Relations at Brigham Young University, she completed an MA in East Asian Studies at Stanford University. With research skills in both Chinese and English, she is a published translator of many academic articles on Chinese history. She also actively participates in writing conferences, including teaching at the Storymakers Conference and leading the "Diversity Ink" group. When not writing, she enjoys gardening, running, and over-analyzing movies with her family. Mengxi lives in Virginia with two little princesses and an absent-minded professor.

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