will make available once I read it.

Alice Mannegan, known in Beijing as Mo Ai-Li, is an interpreter there, and has a thing for Chinese men. Not just any Chinese man, but she is looking for the "true" Chinese man. Thinking she had found him, her father, a US Congressman who is also a racist, talks her out of marrying him. Her father meant well, in his own way, but she has always had a strained relationship with him and had no mother to balance things out. As the story opens, she is contracted to serve as interpreter for Dr. Adam Spencer, an American archaeologist who is seeking some missing bones that belonged to the famous Peking Man. The bones of this early hominid were supposedly ready for shipment to the US, but the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, all hell broke loose in China and the serviceman guarding the bones was put into a prison camp. The bones were lost. But Spencer thinks he has found the answer to where they are located. Alice agrees to go along with him on a small expedition.

The story that author Nicole Mones tells is part mystery, part history and part love story. A lot of it focuses on what the Chinese now refer to as "the Chaos," but what we still consider the Cultural Revolution. I love books that discuss the Cultural Revolution and I was happy with what Mones did with it and how she portrayed that turbulent period in China's past.

But what this novel really touches on is the relationship between families...husband and wife, mother and son, son and father and daughter and father. It is also a look at how people express their love for one another, often to the point of damaging the one they love.

I would recommend it to any reader...it is easy, it flows, and the characters are well developed. I read it in about 2 hours.

I just received this in the mail today from a fellow Book Crosser. Thanks quinnsmom! :)

You're fabulous for sharing so many with me. :)

I'm a little embarrassed about not having read this yet. Have I really had this book for two years?

I just picked up my own copy at a library sale this past weekend, so I'm marking this one "available." It's up for grabs if anyone wants to trade. :)

Sorry, quinnsmom.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

It's time to travel! I've been restless for a few weeks now so I finally asked Fenortner to release me. I thought the post office would be a good place to wait for my next reader. Then I hope to be released again so I can continue to travel the world!

-the book