Tuesday, May 11, 2021

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner



Don't let the pretty pastel cover art fool you into thinking That Summer is a lightweight read. Jennifer Weiner's latest novel delves into the #MeToo movement, showing how toxic masculine culture impels conformist behavior that ruins women's lives. Her protagonist, Diana, struggles with how to hold her rapist and his friends accountable.

Understanding how young men make bad decisions does not exonerate them. 

Weiner's portrayal of a teenage girl destroyed by someone she trusted and cared for, and her long path to recover her derailed life, is a page turner. Diana decided on a plan of revenge, assuming a fake identity to infiltrate her rapist's family. But nothing turns out the way she expects, especially when she bonds with the wife of her rapist.

Diana's experience is handled carefully, showing the resulting emotional scars. The one sexual encounter described is one that models true care and respect, if too graphically detailed for my taste; it seems a model of the behavior women should demand of a lover.

I previously read Weiner's novel Big Summer, reviewed here, and Mrs. Everything, reviewed here.

I received a free gallery from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

That Summer
A Novel
by Jennifer Weiner
Atria Books
Pub Date May 11, 2021  
ISBN: 9781501133541
hardcover CA$37.00 (CAD)

from the publisher

Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful, her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?

While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganize corporations. Diana’s glamorous, sophisticated, single-lady life is miles away from Daisy’s simpler existence. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

From the manicured Main Line of Philadelphia to the wild landscape of the Outer Cape, written with Jennifer Weiner’s signature wit and sharp observations, That Summer is a story about surviving our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of friendship.

Sunday, May 9, 2021

A Theater for Dreamers by Polly Samson

There are no bigger secrets than our parent's lives, unless it is the secrets kept between lovers.

When Erica's mother dies she discovers she didn't know her mother at all. She had only seen the woman who stayed with an abusive husband and father. How did she secretly stash money away for her daughter's future, and where did that secret car come from, and how was it used?

Erica is nineteen and in love with the older, beautiful, wannabe writer Jimmy. When Erica's previous neighbor, her mother's friend Charmain, sends her newest book and invitation to visit her on the Greek island of Hydra, Erica uses her inheritance to take her and Jimmy to Greece.

Hydra is paradise on earth, nestled between the cliffs and the sea, with marble streets and exotic foods and floral odors competing with the smell of sponges piled on the fishing boats.

Charmain and her husband Gordon are the center of a group of ex-pat young people, artists and writers and poets and their muses. Erica finds a surrogate mother in her, and Charmain tries to guide the teenager to prepare for a fuller life, warning her of the pitfalls of love and men and being bound to a supporting role.

In the early 1960s, these Bohemians are seeking meaning in a world threatened by Atomic destruction, rejecting the conformity of the 1950s. And yet, the men still hold to old fashioned ideas about women and love and sex, and the women comply to keep their men. Charmain imagines another way of living, not merely being a man's muse and caretaker to protect his creative process. 

A natural observer, Erica tries to puzzle out the twisted relationships around her, noting the tension in the marriages of Axle and Marianne Jensen and Charmain and Gordon. When Leonard Cohen arrives on the island, already published at age 25, he is ready to claim Marianne when her husband abandons her and their son for another woman. She is the perfect muse and compliant help-meet for a creative man.

As relationships topple, and alcohol and drugs fuel craziness, Erica is forced to alter her idea of her future.

Hydra is central to the novel, with lush descriptions vividly rendering its beauty and challenges. The Greek traditions are observed, the seasonal changes described. I dreamed of it at night, especially after viewing photographs online of the historical denizens of Hydra during this time. Samson's descriptions of these people, their clothing, is so detailed, arising from these photographs.

I also dreamed of Cohen's music, So Long, Marianne, That's No Way to Say Goodbye, and especially The Stranger Song, from Cohen's 1967 record album that I purchased at age 16. I was surprised to learn that the songs Cohen sang at the group gatherings were folk songs like I Ride an Old Paint. I always loved that folk song, and had a 45 record of it when I was a girl. 

I read this book during a cold spell in spring, immersed in the bright light and sea air of a place I will never see, but feel as if I had. I loved this book for taking me to another place, and for the interesting and deeply flawed characters, and for its insight into women's role in men's lives.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A Theater for Dreamers
by Polly Samson
Algonquin Books
Pub Date May 11, 2021
ISBN: 9781643751498
hardcover $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

"Sublime and immersive . . . If you wish you could disappear to a Greek island right now, I highly recommend."

—Jojo Moyes, #1 bestselling author of Me Before You

"This gorgeous, glimmering summer read is itself perfect summer: irresistible and deep, Samson's lyric sentences pulling you into unforgettable sunlight and shadow."

—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of White Houses

It’s 1960, and the world teeters on the edge of cultural, political, sexual, and artistic revolution. On the Greek island of Hydra, a proto-commune of poets, painters, and musicians revel in dreams at the feet of their unofficial leaders, the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled queen and king of bohemia. At the center of this circle of misfit artists are the captivating and inscrutable Axel Jensen, his magnetic wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian ingenue poet named Leonard Cohen.

When eighteen-year-old Erica stumbles into their world, she’s fresh off the boat from London with nothing but a bundle of blank notebooks and a burning desire to leave home in the wake of her mother’s death. Among these artists, she will find an unraveling utopia where everything is tested—the nature of art, relationships, and her own innocence.

Intoxicating and immersive, A Theater for Dreamers is a spellbinding tour-de-force about the beauty between naïveté and cruelty, chaos and utopia, artist and muse—and about the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius. Roiling with the heat of a Grecian summer, A Theater for Dreamers is, according to the Guardian, “a blissful piece of escapism” and “a surefire summer hit.”

Saturday, May 8, 2021

Early Morning Riser, The Chanel Sisters, and News of the World

 

Last week I read two library books from my local library. 

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny had glowing reviews about its humor. The novel is set in the Up North city of Boyne City, Michigan. Our library book club read the author's novel Standard Deviation a few years ago. I thought it would be a welcome bedtime read.

And it was that! I laughed out loud. Heiny knows the Up North culture, and through her character Jane, a young teacher new to the area, provides some very pointed humor. She mentions the iconic Kilwin's ice cream and places Michiganders will know.

It seemed to Jane that people who lived downstate had cabins in Northern Michigan, and people who lived in Northern Michigan had cabins in the Upper Peninsula, but where did people who lived in the Upper Peninsula have cabins? Canada? And where did Canadian people have cabins? At what point did there cease to be an appeal in going north and people gave up and bought time shares in Florida?

I loved the wacky, likable characters that surround Jane. Her love interest Duncan seems to have slept with every woman she meets. Duncan was burned by his first marriage to a beautiful, but controlling, woman. He still mows his exe's yard and fixes things at her house, although she has remarried; her husband is eccentric with endless special needs.

Duncan has taken under his wing Jimmy, a mentally challenged man. A tragic accident changes Jane's life and she assumes care for Jimmy along with Duncan. 

This charming novel has great heart and warmth. 

Available now

from the publisher

A wise, bighearted, boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhere–at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away.

While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world’s most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it–never mind four. Five if you count Aggie’s eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.

But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane’s life is permanently intertwined with Duncan’s, Aggie’s, and Jimmy’s, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane’s eyes? A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work to date.


*****

I read and enjoyed Judithe Little's historical novel Wickwhythe Hall, and a number of years back read Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick. I was interested in Little's new novel The Chanel Sistersthe story of Coco's youngest sister, Antoinette. 

The Chanel sisters Julia-Berthe, Adrienne, Gabrielle, and Antoinette lost their mother and were abandoned by their father, growing up at a convent orphanage. 

The Chanel sisters seek a path out of poverty through work or romance. Antoinette is essential to Coco's design career but she dreams of marriage. Little imagines a love interest that predates her historical marriage, and which explains her death in Argentina.

Readers will love these characters determined to rise above the circumstances of their birth, not only challenging social norms but changing them with fashions that freed women from constricting, ornamental clothing. 

Available now

from the publisher

A novel of survival, love, loss, triumph—and the sisters who changed fashion forever

Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family years before, they’ve grown up under the guidance of pious nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.

The walls of the convent can’t shield them forever, and when they’re finally of age, the Chanel sisters set out together with a fierce determination to prove themselves worthy to a society that has never accepted them. Their journey propels them out of poverty and to the stylish cafés of Moulins, the dazzling performance halls of Vichy—and to a small hat shop on the rue Cambon in Paris, where a business takes hold and expands to the glamorous French resort towns. But when World War I breaks out, their lives are irrevocably changed, and the sisters must gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.

***** 


News of the World by Paulette Jiles is my library book club choice for May. I had a copy on Kindle, but when my husband tried to read it, he was frustrated by the lack of quotation marks. So, he purchased the audiobook.

We listened to the audiobook over three nights, two hours at a time. We were mesmerized by the characters and gorgeous writing. The narrator, Grover Garland, was terrific.

We both exclaimed at passages of great beauty; one became my #SundaySentence on Twitter.

With the release of the movie based on the book, starring the wonderful Tom Hanks, I expect most people have heard of this story of a Civil War veteran and the girl captured by natives and their fraught travels across Texas.  Capt. Kidd is to return to her extended family members, but becomes attached to her, and he has a deep understanding of the challenges she faces in reassimilation.

My fifth great-uncle Michael Rhodes, whose family were some of the first settlers in the Shenandoah Valley, was captured by Native Americans and taken to Ohio for three years before being returned in an exchange. I thought about him and wondered what his life was like. He saw his parents scalped, his siblings murdered. Characters in News talk about how quickly white settlers became acclimated to native life and have trouble reentering their old life.

I previous read Jiles's Simon the Fiddler, and was happy to meet him again in this novel. And early in my Kindle days, I read Jiles's novel The Color of Lightning. I have her Stormy Weather on Kindle waiting to be read.

from the publisher

In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.

In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.


Friday, May 7, 2021

Covid-19 Life: TBR, New Quilt Project, More Trillium

I decided to start a hand sewing project for summer--The Cherish Quilt by Jodi Godfrey at Tables of Cloth. It is an English Paper Piecing quilt with nice big centers for special prints. There were several cool looking EPP projects I have seen on Instagram, including this one.

the Cherish Quilt https://www.talesofcloth.com/epp-kits/cherish-quilt

Now to get prepared.

I have managed to clear my June 1 reading shelf! I have two summer books to read. But over summer I have 11 books to read for September and October! (So far...)

New on my NetGalley shelf:

  • Legends of the North Cascade by Jonathan Evison for an Algonquin blog tour
  • Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket, short stories by Hilma Wolitzer. I found the title story online at the Saturday Evening Post website and loved it! Wolitzer wrote stories for women's magazines in the later 20th c.
  • Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor about an Antarctic expedition gone wrong
  • The Return of the Pharaoh: From the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, MD by Nicholas Meyer whose last Watson book The Adventures of the Peculiar Protocal I reviewed (I have read his Watson novels since the Seven Percent Solution came out in the 1970s)

Coming in the mail from Catilin Hamilton Marketing is

  • The Artist Colony by Joanna FitzPatrick

We returned to Tenhave Woods in Royal Oak, MI to see the trillium in full bloom.



The woods is carpeted with the flowers.

And other flowers as well.

And of course, I must end with a pic of the fur grandkids, Sunny and Ellie enjoying the sunshine in their back yard.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Thursday, May 6, 2021

Lincoln in Private by Ronald C. White

 

Facing protesters over "Mr Lincoln's war," President Lincoln was preparing a reply when a congressman complimented him on so swiftly composing from scratch. Lincoln pointed to an open desk drawer filled with scraps of paper with his "best thoughts on the subject." He explained, "I never let one of those ideas escape me."

These private notes and reflections were a valuable resource for the president, and a more valuable exercise for working out and preserving his thoughts. Never meant for public consumption, his notes were open and revealing about his private beliefs and feelings.

Some of his notes had been destroyed when he moved from his Illinois home to Washington, D.C. But 109 were found after his death, deposited in a bank vault. Lincoln's secretaries Nicolay and Hay included some of these private notes in their ten volume history. 

Lincoln in Private by Ronald C. White explores ten of these private notes, contemplating on what we can learn from them about Lincoln. They vary from a lyrical description of encountering Niagara Falls to a mediation on Divine Will in human affairs.

Lincoln's ability to logic out arguments comes across in these notes. He was exceedingly well read, delving into newspapers and books from across the country, including pro-slavery sources. He thereby could counter arguments from the opposite political spectrum, understanding their position.

White takes readers through a thorough exegesis of each note, putting it in historic context as well as explaining its significance.

I am even more impressed by Lincoln. Considering his lack of formal education and rural roots, his depression and life challenges, his genius could not be contained, but, luckily for our country, found its proper application in at our most critical time in history.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President
by Ronald C. White
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date May 4, 2021
ISBN: 9781984855091
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

“A fascinating tour inside the mind—and the heart—of Abraham Lincoln . . . An important and timeless work.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of His Truth Is Marching On

From the New York Times bestselling author of A. Lincoln and American Ulysses, a revelatory glimpse into the intellectual journey of our sixteenth president through his private notes to himself, explored together here for the first time

A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts,” as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these frank, unpolished pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.

Now, renowned Lincoln historian Ronald C. White walks readers through twelve of Lincoln’s most important private notes, showcasing our greatest president’s brilliance and empathy, but also his very human anxieties and ambitions. We look over Lincoln’s shoulder as he grapples with the problem of slavery, attempting to find convincing rebuttals to those who supported the evil institution (“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”); prepares for his historic debates with Stephen Douglas; expresses his private feelings after a defeated bid for a Senate seat (“With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure”); voices his concerns about the new Republican Party’s long-term prospects; develops an argument for national unity amidst a secession crisis that would ultimately rend the nation in two; and, for a president many have viewed as not religious, develops a sophisticated theological reflection in the midst of the Civil War (“it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party”). Additionally, in a historic first, all 111 Lincoln notes are transcribed in the appendix, a gift to scholars and Lincoln buffs alike.

These are notes Lincoln never expected anyone to read, put into context by a writer who has spent his career studying Lincoln’s life and words. The result is a rare glimpse into the mind and soul of one of our nation’s most important figures.

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live



The Secret History of Home Economics promised to be interesting, but I had no idea how radical this history was, ot how pervasive its impact on society and politics. Danielle Drelinger's history is full of surprises. 

When I was in junior high, girls were required to take a semester of Home Economics classes. In cooking, I learned how to use displacement to accurately measure shortening. In sewing, we used the Bishop method to make an apron and an A-line skirt. 

I admit, I thought that Home Ec was pretty lame and meant for future housewives. And yet...I taught myself to cook from scratch and to sew, how to organic garden and bake bread, and how to follow a pattern and to make quilts. 

It turns out that there was a reason I felt that way. In the 1960s when I had those classes, the concept of home economics had been diminished from it's roots when scientists and feminists founded home economics studies. I was unaware of the impact on society the home economics had during wartime or in promoting social and advancing racial equity. And I certainly did not know that home economics also enforced a middle class, American, white life style on immigrants, people of color, and the rural poor.

As society changed, the use of home economics reflected the times. 

Drelinger introduces us to a series of intelligent women who were barred from male-dominated careers. Their used their skills in science to study nutrition to help the war effort, support government control to enforce pure foods and temperance, and they created the first nutritional guidelines.

They worked with business to promote new electronic appliances and created recipes for food companies. They wrote pamphlets to support food conservation and the remaking of clothes during the war.

On the dark side, some supported Eugenics and immigrants traditional heritage was ignored as they were pressured to assimilate.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live
by Danielle Dreilinger
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date May 4, 2021   
ISBN: 9781324004493
hardcover $27.95 (USD)

from the publisher

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics.

The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and business-people. And it has something to teach us today.

In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education.

Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages.

This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

About the Author: Danielle Dreilinger is a former New Orleans Times-Picayune education reporter and a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow. She also wrote for the Boston Globe and worked at the Boston NPR station WGBH.

***** 

In this book I learned about an item in my collection, a J. C. Penney's publication Fashions and Fabrics that was sold for home ec teacher's use. Read about it here.

I have written about recipe books published by corporations to promote their products

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Thief of Souls by Brian Klingborg


From the first sentence, I was hooked. A woman's corpse, 'hollowed out like a birchbark canoe' is discovered. Meanwhile, Inspector Lu Fei of the Public Security Bureau is alone in a bar planning to 'get gloriously drunk' on warm wine, the sound of traditional Chinese fiddle music playing in the background. Lu is smitten with the barkeep, Yanyan, a beautiful widow. Then his cell phone rings; its his night off but the unthinkable has happened in his rural, backwater township: a woman has been murdered, and her organs removed.

I will admit, when I was offered Thief of Souls, I downloaded it to look at, never suspecting I would devour it in 24 hours. The mystery is good with red herrings and a deranged murderer and interdepartmental conflicts. There are chilling scenes, and threatening scenes, and emotional scenes, and a hearty dash of wit and humor. 

But what charmed me was the location and the characters.

Lu quotes Master Kong--Confucius to us--revealing his traditional, unmodern, unCommunist values. Lu believes in love before marriage, filial piety, and most brazenly of all, he believes in justice, not convenient arrests and forced convictions. It gets him into trouble with his superiors, this insisting on finding the woman's killer when they already have a man in custody. 

As Lu follows the trail into Harbin city, he unveils corruption, is pursued by thugs, kills a man in self defense, and unearths the underground gay culture.  

Klingborg does an excellent job of succinctly explaining how Chinese police, law, and government work and readers learn about the lives of rural and city Chinese people. Central to the story are traditional Chinese beliefs about death. 

Stability takes precedence over public safety, we read, involving the suppression of information, quick, although not always accurate solving of crimes, and fiddling with the statistics. And of course, deniability is par for the course: "Our justice system doesn't wrongly convict innocent people."

I look forward to reading another Inspector Lu Fei mystery.

I was given a free galley by the publisher through Net Galley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Thief of Souls: An Inspector Lu Fei Mystery
by Brian Klingborg
St. Martin's Press/ Minotaur Books
Mystery & Thrillers
Pub Date May 4, 2021   
ISBN: 9781250779052
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

In Brian Klingborg's Thief of Souls, the brutal murder of a young woman in a rural village in Northern China sends shockwaves all the way to Beijing—but seemingly only Inspector Lu Fei, living in exile in the small town, is interested in justice for the victim.

Lu Fei is a graduate of China’s top police college but he’s been assigned to a sleepy backwater town in northern China, where almost nothing happens and the theft of a few chickens represents a major crime wave. That is until a young woman is found dead, her organs removed, and joss paper stuffed in her mouth. The CID in Beijing—headed by a rising political star—is on the case but in an increasingly authoritarian China, prosperity and political stability are far more important than solving the murder of an insignificant village girl. As such, the CID head is interested in pinning the crime on the first available suspect rather than wading into uncomfortable truths, leaving Lu Fei on his own.

As Lu digs deeper into the gruesome murder, he finds himself facing old enemies and creating new ones in the form of local Communist Party bosses and corrupt business interests. Despite these rising obstacles, Lu remains determined to find the real killer, especially after he links the murder to other unsolved homicides. But the closer he gets to the heart of the mystery, the more he puts himself and his loved ones in danger.