Min Li’s Perfect Place now available on Amazon

20 Monday Jun 2022

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Min Li’s Perfect Place, the sequel to The Crystal Monkey, is now available on Amazon in eBook form. To order, click the image below.

It seems we still have a couple of weeks before the print version is available. I’m informed that the book finished printing today, but it takes some time to get it into the supply chain. At least in eBook form, it is easier to smuggle into China.

Min Li’s Perfect Place

10 Friday Jun 2022

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My newest book, Min Li’s Perfect Place, is due to be published on June 20, 2022, by The Conrad Press in England. Unfortunately, because it is being published in England, copies will not appear in America until June 24.

If Min Li did everything right, she never would’ve survived in the fast-changing world of modern China.  Growing up in the countryside, Min Li knew that doing well in school could change her family’s history and end the abject poverty in which they lived.  But Chinese custom dictated that she obey her father who sold her into a marriage with a boy who had twice attempted to rape her.  If she obeyed her father, not only would she remain in poverty, but she would have suffered abuse the rest of her life.

Secretly helped by her mother, Min Li fled the countryside and took her chances in the big city without the permission of the government or her family.  Here, she learned to be independent and to rely on herself.  But that independence came with a price, and Min Li came face to face with the conflict between traditional Chinese society and the trappings of modern China, including corrupt government, organized crime, and even human trafficking. Trapped in the Middle East, Min Li became an unwitting victim only to be saved by the most unlikely of heroes, an American teacher whom she once loved twenty years before in China.

One cannot read a newspaper today without seeing something about China, its growing threat to world peace, the political turmoil of recent purges, the mushrooming growth of its upper class, but we rarely read about the Chinese people, the average Chinese citizen struggling to survive in the slums and block apartments of its titan cities and the poverty of the countryside.  We read rags-to-riches stories, but we know nothing of the people who consider success as merely being free of tyrannical employers and bondage to a small plot of land.  Min Li’s Pefect Place is the story of Min Li and her quest to live a comfortable life in a system that still keeps women under the yoke of their fathers and husbands.

Min Li’s Pefect Place can best be described as literary fiction, but it is truly historical, albeit recent history.  Just under 86,000 words, I’ve included a glossary of Chinese names and words that appear throughout the book.  There is nothing sexually explicit in the book, and I’ve refrained from using any English vulgarity, which I believe contribute to the wholesome attitude of the main character and makes it suitable for school libraries.

Banned in China

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Fans in China are unable to purchase The Crystal Monkey. There are ways to get it into the country, however, such as travelers carrying it in their suitcases. It can be mailed to specific addresses in China, but too many packages are inspected by postal authorities. One other way is for a school under the supervision of an American or Canadian program to order the book as part of its curriculum. This is how my former school, Henan Experimental High School, was able to obtain copies of Red China Blues.