Circle of Cranes tells the story of 13-year-old orphan Suyin, who is sent from her impoverished Chinese village to New York City in the care of a smooth-talking human smuggler. There, she is forced to work in a Chinatown sweatshop and send her meagre earnings back home to the villagers who banished her. But Suyin has a secret that sets her apart from the other girls in the sweatshop: the recently acquired knowledge that she, like her mother, was born into a mystical ancient sisterhood of shape-shifting crane-women. When the cranes’ lives are threatened, it is up to Suyin to save them.

LeBox deserves praise for not sugar-­coating the brutality Suyin witnesses in the sweatshop, or her depiction of the protagonist’s limitations as a hero. Though Suyin forges strong friendships and tries to protect those around her, ultimately she learns that she can’t save everyone.

Suyin is a well-crafted character; she is angry and impatient, yet kind-hearted and resourceful, a combination of traits that makes her sympathetic and believable. Less successful, however, is the pacing of her quest. At times, explanatory elements are withheld for the purpose of driving the narrative, which causes undue confusion for the reader. The time period is also tricky to pin down. Until a cell phone appears in one scene, the story could take place at virtually any time during the 20th century.

Even with the temporal vagueness, the strict gender divisions presented may be difficult for readers to accept. The crane sisterhood requires a kind of devotion that seems to impose yet another obedient and female-specific role on Suyin, when readers may long instead for her to follow her independent streak and fully realize her potential as a modern, memorable hero.