The White Pearl

Stifled as the wife of a British rubber-plantation owner, Connie Thornton dreams of escape until the Japanese invasion of Malaya in 1942 blows her world apart. Then Connie, her family, and friends flee the invasion on the family yacht an escape, yes, but hardly the one she had imagined. The author of four other historical novels, including The Red Scarf (2008), Furnivall creates fully realized characters and sets them on a collision course, their tangled motivations keeping the reader guessing. The intrigue is driven largely by Connie and her discovery of a dangerous love, but all of the group members have their own reasons to seek redemption or revenge in their push for survival. As events reach a crescendo, Connie's strength and resilience provide a glimpse of how the new world will look as the old order passes away. This beautifully paced adventure will be devoured by historical-fiction readers both for its gripping, emotionally torrential story and for its lush, richly realized portrait of colonial Southeast Asia.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2010 Booklist

In another of her historical action stories, Furnivall (The Russian Concubine) takes readers on a tour through the islands of the Southeast Asian Pacific in the throes of WWII. The novel opens in colonial Malaya with Connie Hadley, the compliant wife of a plantation owner, in a car accident that kills a native woman in front of the woman's twin teenage children. Wracked with guilt, Connie makes it her mission to help twins Razak and Maya, despite her husband's protests. But the story takes a turn from domestic colonial tale to action-adventure when the Japanese invade. Connie assembles the family on their titular yacht, casting together the native twins with her own young son, a mysteriously well-connected boat captain, and a rough-and-tumble couple they encounter fleeing on foot. As The White Pearl hurtles between the islands around Singapore, its inhabitants watch the Japanese and Allied forces battle it out in the skies. The group lands on an island that is not as uninhabited as they'd thought and it all ends with an exhilarating, if somewhat implausible, denouement. Furnivall weaves the dramas of her characters into the threads of history, creating an engrossing read on many levels. Agent: Teresa Chris, the Teresa Chris Literary Agency. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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