Transporting us to time of turmoil
NICOLE Mones’ award-winning novels, The Last Chinese Chef and Lost in Translation, are in print in more than 20 languages. Her non-fiction writing on China, where she lived and ran a textile business for 18 years, has appeared in many American newspapers and magazines.
Mones sets the scene for her latest novel in 1936, a fraught year when Japan’s southward expansion from its base in Manchuria turned into an all-out invasion of China.
Chiang Kai-shek conceded more and more territory to the Japanese, believing the Communists to be the greater threat.
A love story is played out against this backdrop of conflict and hardship. Black American musician Thomas Greene, newly arrived in Shanghai from segregated Baltimore and flat broke, soon climbs the ladder of success as leader of a black jazz orchestra. It’s the big band era and wealthy patrons want the charismatic Greene for their glittering social events and big nightclubs.
The beautiful Song Yuhua has been bonded since age 18 to Shanghai’s most powerful crime boss in payment for her father’s gambling debts.
In this teeming international mélange of Americans, British, French, White Russian refugees and Jews, the Shanghai moneyed set dance the nights away, oblivious to impending doom.
Unlikely lovers Thomas and Song are thrown together when Shanghai falls to the Japanese, navigating the dangers until they are confronted with an impossible choice. Mones’ deep connection with China allows her to draw captivating characters, transporting the reader to a time of intense turmoil and change.
Although a historical romance, all the events she describes actually occurred and the only fictional characters are the two main protagonists.
Mones’ beautiful prose and sense of place never loses momentum until the final page and its dramatic surprise ending.