China Diaries

Book excerpt: All Captain Stephen Cannon knows of Anna, his Russian emigre mother, and Alex, his aviation-pioneering father, is from their China diaries, their personal journals that chronicle their courtship in China through Pearl Harbor. Then, after an epic escape from the siege of Hong Kong by clipper, carrying important documents to the States, they disappear into the maelstrom in 1943. his mother abandoned him and returned to China to satisfy sexual desires. Now, fifty years later, he receives a call from a Chinese exchange student whose great uncle has just emigrated to Hong Kong from the PRC bringing with him Anna's Russian map case, journals, a strange medal, and the incredible story of how they escaped the infamous Japanese rape of Nanking, in 1938. to China to recover the diaries and discover the real reason why Anna left. In doing so he enters the nineteen-thirties world of his mother: a China beleaguered with warring political factions, ten years of Japanese aggression, espionage, love, betrayal and an environment where emigre women survived by selling themselves in the cabarets. believable, the flying scenes accurate to the finest detail, the tragedy of WWII evoked with honest, clear-eyed realism. Best of all, China Diaries just happens to be a cracking good story, says Robert Gandt, Aviation author of China Clipper and Acts of Vengeance.