J.I. Jung
Eddie Rum
Eddie Rum is the protagonist in a series of historical noir thrillers set in New York City during the Jazz Age. He is a mixed-race Chinese American who is passing for white while America is under the law of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which, among other things, limits Chinese immigration, forces Chinese to register with the government, and prevents them from voting. The Chinese Exclusion Act was American law 1882 to 1942.
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Death Avenue
October. 1919. Eddie Rum returns to New York City from the Great War in Europe. As he struggles to make a living, Eddie discovers the body of a dead Chinese man on the train tracks that run through Tenth Avenue. The search for the dead man’s identity takes Eddie into his own past and across the city that never sleeps.​
“Jung masterfully presents the reader with complex moral entanglements and even more impressively resists the facile allure of any contrived solutions to them. Eddie is a man of irresolvable contradictions and a mesmerizingly nuanced protagonist.
A deeply intriguing novel, emotionally powerful and unburdened by cheap sentimentality.” – Kirkus Reviews