Description: When Jill Lau receives an early morning phone call that her elderly father has fallen gravely ill, she and her sister, Celeste, catch the first flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. The man they find languishing in the hospital is a barely recognizable shadow of his old indomitable self. According to his housekeeper, a couple of mysterious photographs arrived anonymously in the mail in the days before his collapse. These pictures are only the first link in a chain of events that begin to reveal the truth about their father's past and how he managed to escape from Guangzhou, China, during the Cultural Revolution to make a new life for himself in Hong Kong. Someone from the old days has returned to haunt him--exposing the terrible things he did to survive and flee one of the most violent periods of Chinese history, reinvent himself, and make the family fortune. Can Jill piece together the story of her family's past without sacrificing her father's love and reputation?
Brief description: Leslie Shimotakahara holds a Ph.D. in English from Brown University. Her memoir The Reading List won the Canada-Japan Literary Award in 2012, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the K.M. Hunter Artist Award. She currently resides in Toronto.