The Crimson Pagoda

Name: The Crimson Pagoda
Rating: 4.13 (477 reviews)

by Christopher Nicole Book 1 in the China Series series.

First published 1983

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4.0(477)

The newly married and youthful Mrs Constance Baird feels like her life is only just beginning as she sets sail to join her husband, a famous American missionary, in Peking, China. She is desperately excited to explore not only the foreign land with all its alien culture but also the role of a wife and all the pleasures that come with it. In no time at all Constance is shocked on both accounts. China stuns her with its barbaric and improper behaviour which, almost against her will, begins to tease her imagination.

At the same time, Mr Henry Baird, despairing of his sinful desires, proves unable to indulge Constance’s wishes. The marriage, failing from the beginning, spirals further and further out of control as Constance, aided by her only ally Kate, inadvertently becomes a famous ‘Devil Woman’ throughout the region and faces an audience with the Empress herself. Constance’s troubled marriage and growing notoriety unfold during the final crisis of the Qing court, when missionary activity, anti-foreign violence and imperial politics converge in the Boxer era.