In 1867, an American merchant ship, the Rover, sank off the coast of southern Taiwan. Fourteen sailors reached the shore, where almost all were killed by indigenous people. In retaliation, the United States launched two disastrous military operations against local tribes. Eventually, the U.S. consul to Amoy, Charles Le Gendre, negotiated a treaty with Tauketok, the chief of the eighteen tribes of the area, that secured safe passage for shipwrecked sailors.

Yao-Chang Chen’s historical novel Puppet Flower retells the story of the Rover incident, bringing to light its pivotal role in Taiwanese history. Merging documented events and literary imagination, the novel vividly depicts Tauketok, Le Gendre, and other historical figures alongside the story of Butterfly, a young woman of mixed ethnic heritage who serves as an interpreter and mediator during the crisis. Chen deftly reconstructs the multiethnic and multilingual society of southern Taiwan in the second half of the nineteenth century from multiple perspectives, portraying local people’s daily struggles for survival and their interactions with Han Chinese settlers, Qing dynasty bureaucrats, and Western officials, tradesmen, and adventurers. The novel explores nineteenth-century Sino-American and Sino-indigenous relations and emphasizes the centrality of Taiwanese indigenous cultures to the island’s history.

A gripping work of historical fiction, Puppet Flower is a powerful revisionist narrative of a formative moment in Taiwan’s past. It was recently adapted into a popular Taiwanese TV miniseries, Seqalu: Formosa 1867.

"[A] nuanced depiction of a formative Formosa." - Taipei Times

"Chen’s novel successfully delivers an alternative history of Taiwan in which all the involved subjectivities, especially those that have traditionally been neglected by official narratives, are given a voice." - Asian Review of Books

"The whole novel is fascinating in that it mixes in a fairly messy but also fairly conventional personal story with the complex manoeuvrings of the various powers seeking control of Taiwan." - The Modern Novel

"[A] unique reimagining of an obscure event in 'a turning point' year in Taiwanese history. Told from a multitude of perspectives, particularly of indigenous peoples, Chen’s story does not sacrifice history and complicated colonial relations for cute dramatic contrivances. This is historical fiction with an emphasis on the former." - The Historical Novels Review

"Chen’s fiction is important in that it not only tells a forgotten history but also gives voice to the complexity of Taiwanese identity and to those who are most forgotten: the many indigenous people who predate the colonial influences of the Han Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, and Americans." - World Literature Today

"Puppet Flower is an absorbing tour through the multicultural hodgepodge that was Formosa in the mid-19th century" - Cha: An Asian Literary Journal