Jade Blossom never ventures beyond the walls of her family's Inner Court. In seventeenth-century Korea, a girl of good family does not leave home. Until she marries, she is expected to spend her time learning to sew, to embroider, to do laundry, to manage a kitchen—so that when she makes her wedding journey to her husband's Inner Court, she will be a good wife. 

Jade accepts her destiny, and yet she is endlessly curious. She eagerly questions her older brother about the adventures that only boys can have: trips to the market and to the ancestral grave sites in the mountains, reading and painting, conversations with their father about business and politics. Sometimes the things Tiger Heart describes are more vivid in her mind than her everyday surroundings. If only she could see them for herself! 

Jade Blossom's daring attempt to enlarge her world succeeds in surprising ways, revealing the truth of her father's words: "The path to wisdom lies not in certainty, but in trying to understand."

From the dust jacket