Distant Land of My Father（ISBN=9780156027137）

The distant land of Bo Caldwell's title is Shanghai - the place with which Anna Schoene's self-made ex-pat father has fallen in love, and invested with a sense of glamour and ownership. To his only child, it is home, pure and simple, until war and the Japanese invasion uproot her and her mother, sending them back to the unfamiliar safety of America. Her father is supposedly soon to follow. None of them yet knows that this is the last time they will ever live together as a family. Through the medium of her dead father's diaries, a much older Anna traces his progress through the 1940s and '50s from millionaire, to Japanese prisoner, to interpreter, to faithless deserter of his family, to entrepreneur, to Chinese prisoner, to penniless deportee, to his final reappearance in her life after her mother's death, as a janitor in an office block. And together with the remarkable changes to her father's fortunes, Anna charts the ebbs and flows of her relationship with him, from childish admiration through adolescent disgust and rejection through to full acceptance as a grown woman. (Kirkus UK)

Anna, the narrator of this riveting first novel, lives in a storybook world: exotic pre- World War II Shanghai, with handsome young parents, wealth, and comfort. Her father, the son of missionaries, leads a charmed and secretive life, though his greatest joy is sharing his beloved city with his only daughter. Yet when Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to California, he stays behind, believing his connections and a little bit of luck will keep him safe. Through Anna's memories and her father's journals we learn of his fall from charismatic millionaire to tortured prisoner, in a story of betrayal and reconciliation that spans two continents. "The Distant Land of My Father," a breathtaking and richly lyrical debut, unfolds to reveal an enduring family love through tragic circumstances. National Bestseller