The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall Book 2 in the Russian Concubine series.

First published 2007

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Junchow, China, 1928. Sixteen-year-old Lydia Ivanova and her mother Valentina are White Russian refugees who have been reduced from privilege to poverty after fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. Lydia steals to keep them alive, moving between the foreign settlement and the Chinese city beyond its walls, where political violence is intensifying and Communist activists are being hunted.

Lydia's life changes when she falls in love with Chang An Lo, a young Chinese Communist. Their relationship crosses racial, social and political boundaries just as Chiang Kai-shek's forces close in on local Communists. Family secrets, criminal gangs and the unresolved fate of Lydia's father draw the pair into a conflict in which personal loyalty and revolutionary politics become increasingly difficult to separate.