by Vanessa Chan
First published 2024
Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara watches her world collapse around her. Her teenage son Abel has vanished without a trace. Her youngest daughter Jasmin hides in the basement, desperate to avoid the Japanese comfort stations. Her eldest, Jujube, serves tea to drunken soldiers and grows more furious each day. Cecily carries a terrible secret that explains their suffering. Ten years earlier, she had grown restless as the wife of a minor British colonial official. When the magnetic General Fujiwara recruited her as a spy, she believed his vision of Asian liberation. She fed intelligence to the Japanese, helping them prepare their invasion. Now the brutal occupation she helped enable destroys everything she loves. Her family teeters on the edge of ruin, and they must never discover her betrayal. As the war reaches its final, most violent phase, Cecily faces an impossible choice between her survival and theirs.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: family-drama, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Malaya
Period: 1945, 1935
541 pages · Library Binding · Thorndike Press Large Print
Content warnings: war