Outrun the Moon has so much to recommend it: Historic fiction, a Chinese-American school girl living in Chinatown overcoming all odds to attend a prestigious all white girls’ school, and the action and adventure of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Readers will cheer at the spunk of the main character, Mercy, who has ambition and wants to be an entrepreneur.  We cheer as she literally bribes/blackmails/connives her way into the school, in part by deceiving them that she is a Chinese heiress (although she was born in California and has never been to China). The reader fumes at the racism and how the Chinese are treated. And the reader roots for Mercy as she helps her fellow students, and others, survive on the day of the catastrophic earthquake and fire, and in the days following.