Dragon Keeper

Inside the walls of the Han emperor's palace, a girl with no name tends to caged dragons that everyone else has forgotten. When the last living dragon must be freed, she becomes his keeper on a journey west across mountains and river valleys — territory mapped in silk and described in oracle bones. Wilkinson builds her adventure out of genuine Han Dynasty detail: the imperial court's ritual calendar, the silk road's early trade goods, the precise hierarchy of palace servants. The China of 200 BCE comes alive through the eyes of someone at the very bottom of its order.