What strength of spirit can outweigh the frailty of flesh?
Beneath the civilized facade of nineteenth century French colonial Saigon seethes a different world of demonic shape-shifting tigers, blood-thirsty vampires and powerful, predatory men.
Bian is a young Annamese girl whose father is a disgraced mandarin. The family is hounded by lies that he stole the emperor’s gold, and criminal gangs hunt them through the shanty towns and floating villages.
In a desperate bid to save all their lives, Bian’s parents decide to flee the South, leaving their daughters behind and trusting in a web of lies and deceptions to protect them. Bian’s elder sister disappears into the anonymity of domestic service as a maid. Bian is adopted by the Beauclercs, a French couple high in the administration.
For a few wonderful years, the scheme seems to work, but just as French designs for the colony change, and the Beauclercs are ordered to return, Bian learns the awful truth about what has happened to her sister; the lies within lies that have protected her at her sister’s expense.
Bian will allow nothing to prevent her sister’s rescue, not even the discovery of what truly waits in the shadows. Alone, betrayed, neither truly Annamese nor French, Bian must reap the harvest of lies.