num_pages: 272
description: "With a dramatic sense of time and place, Caroline Petit has woven a story as intricate as embroidered Chinese silk. She blends a tragic period in Asian history with the extraordinary journey of Leah Kolbe, a compelling character who is perfect for Petit's late-1930s Hong Kong."-Jacqueline Winspear, author of Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather Hong Kong, 1937. Orphaned at the age of 19 by the sudden death of her father, a shady Hong Kong dealer in antiquities, Leah Kolbe finds that she has also been left penniless. Her only assets are the skills her father taught connoisseurship, secretiveness and duplicity. She is approached by a Mr. Chang, who claims to have known her father and offers her a commission to go to Manchukuo (the Japanese puppet kingdom recently established in Manchuria) to smuggle out Chinese imperial treasures-and the chief eunuch. She consents, and, accompanied by her faithful amah and a white Russian woman in Chang's pay, she takes the train north. The trip is perilous, as is her return, through besieged Nanking and by sampan across the South China Sea. But it is not until she reaches the empty house on Victoria Peak back in Hong Kong that Leah realizes that she has become a woman with a country of one. Caroline Petit was born in Washington, DC, raised in Maryland and now lives in Victoria, Australia with her husband. She is a graduate of Chatham College in Pittsburgh and holds advanced degrees from Johns Hopkins University, the London School of Economics and the University of Melbourne's Law School. She is a writer and producer for Write Angle Productions, and her writing has appeared in numerous publications. The Fat Man's Daughter is her first novel.
language: English
title: The Fat Man's Daughter
titlecomplete: The Fat Man's Daughter
genres: Mystery, Historical Mystery, Historical Fiction, Fiction, China
ratings_count: 37
series: Leah Kolbe
publisher: Soho Press