Empire of Glass, a novel by Solimine about her relationships with the Chinese family. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"I was shocked. It wasn't at all what I was expecting－my Chinese sister writing to me, in both English and Chinese, saying that my Chinese host mother had been sick and passed away."

During that summer after her freshman year, she came to China as a travel guide researcher and first visited the family in Beijing, where she learned what had happened and mourned the loss of Liming with them.

"As a result of experiencing that grief together, I grew even closer to my host sister and father in ways I never expected."

When she visited Liming's grave for the first time, the widower said, in a message for Liming, that Solimine would take care of their daughter after his death.

The family apartment in Beijing became a second home to Solimine, and she often stayed there during her summers in college and, later, graduate school.

"I felt like there was something so compelling about being so close to this family," Solimine says, adding that it meant being privileged to hear threads of family stories from Liming's husband.

So when she discovered the creative track of the Fulbright program, she applied for－and ultimately received－a grant to fund an entire year in China, recording the family stories and exploring her place in the family.

"I wanted to spend time with the family and understand their history and think more critically about my relationship with them," she says.

The intention was to craft a nonfiction work.

"A lot of time had passed, but I had access to these vivid, beautiful memories," she says of the family's old stories.

But as she began writing the book, Solimine found herself drawn to fiction instead.