The Girl from Junchow

I know I said to expect pictures of Italy this week, but I wanted to write this before I forgot anything important! I bought The Concubine's Secret, by Kate Furnivall, in the Rome airport to read on the ten hour flight home. It's the sequal to Furnivall's action-packed The Russian Concubine. When I got home, I learned that the book I had bought is selling under a different title in the US: The Girl from Junchow.

Furnivall has picked up Lydia's story where she left off... Lydia has left 1930s China with two companions in search of the father she believed to be dead. In reality, her father has been a Russian prisoner for ten years, held by Stalin for his engineering abilities. He has been forced to create a weapon that would kill thousands.

Meanwhile, Lydia's love, Chang An Lo, fights for a Communist China. Lydia has lost her mother and left behind her love; her pain is great but she is hopeful for her father. The search for him is dangerous and no one is left untouched by Stalin's merclessness.

Furnivall keeps the action flowing at a reasonable speed and, truthfully, I read for probably six hours of our flight. I had only a few pages left and I finished those last night. I have no idea why Furnivall is so focused on 1930s Communist countries as they're not exactly romantic settings. Her The Red Scarf was brutal in its descriptions of labor camps. But I will keep reading because her strong, intelligent female leads are a delight.

I get amused at bookseller's attempts to sell "summer reads" - which they say should be light and fluffy. Furnivall is not light nor fluffy. After reading her, though, you will have a newfound respect for the human spirit.