Year of the Water Horse

“Raised in a large chaotic family outside Boston, the journalist Janice Page recalls an eventful childhood and the love story that brought her to China and back again. Page is salty, blunt, and self-deprecating. The peace she experiences at the end of Year of the Water Horse is hard-earned, and a pleasure to share with its resilient author.” – The New York Times Book Review
“Janice Page writes with wit and warmth about the process by which she and her husband completed their family with an adopted daughter from his family’s ancestral region in China.” – The Boston Globe, Kate Tuttle
“Washington Post editor Page reflects on family trauma and the ties that bind in her funny and affecting debut. Armed with sharp wit and bracing emotional intelligence, Page tackles heavy subjects with an admirably light touch, rendering each of her relatives in three dimensions and prompting readers to think deeply about the legacies they’ve inherited from their own families.” – Publishers Weekly
“A gorgeously written, truly funny journey of a woman through womanhood—motherhood, wifehood, personhood, full on adulthood. Page’s sentences are crafted with care and they glide along with insight and joy and the precision you would expect from such a serious writer, even when she is not serious. I laughed a lot! Year of the Water Horse is a joy to read.” – Julia Sweeney, actress, comedian, and author of If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother
“In Year of the Water Horse, Janice Page deftly illuminates the power and weight of family history across generations and cultures. Page takes us through the deeply personal journey of adopting a child while navigating the complex landscape of both her own and her husband’s family history. The author’s desire to embrace but not repeat the past while creating a family of her own delivers a tender and resonant reckoning. Year of the Water Horse is a memoir that will leave you laughing through the tears.” * A.M. Homes, author of The Mistress’s Daughter, This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice and more *

Janice Page edits arts, film, and culture at The Washington Post. Prior to that, Page was a deputy managing editor at The Boston Globe, where she oversaw publication of books done in partnership with The Globe, including The New York Times best-sellers Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy and Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice and multiple championship sports books on the Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox, and Bruins. She has also been on staff at The Los Angeles Times, The Providence Journal-Bulletin and written for The New York Times and MSN. A Boston-area native, Janice graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude from Rutgers University and was named the 2023 recipient of the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residency at Yaddo, where she worked on Year of the Water Horse.

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