CHINA BOY by Gus Lee (Plume:...

CHINA BOY by Gus Lee (Plume: $10.95; 322 pp.). Kai Ting’s happy family life ends when his adoring mother dies, leaving the puny, spoiled boy to grow up in a rough district of postwar San Francisco. Kai becomes the favorite victim of the local bullies and his shrewish stepmother, who “missed her calling when the SS closed its ranks to all comers after the demise of Hitler.” As he learns self-defense from an assortment of colorful characters, he begins to integrate the Chinese and American elements of his identity in an engaging novel that would have benefited from some judicious pruning.