Girls on Wire

Li Lin, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a coal miner, watches planes trace lines across the sky above her Shanxi village every day. Her father sees dreams of flight as a waste of time—in their world, keeping your feet firmly on the ground is what matters. But when a new geography teacher arrives with maps of distant continents, a window opens for Li Lin to a world wider than the horizon of the coal pits. Her stubborn yearning to soar will clash not only with family tradition but with rigid social structures where a girl's future is often decided at birth.