[Malay Quadrilogy 01] • A Flash of Water

The year is 1883. China is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. In the countryside, antagonism against foreigners and missionaries is growing and the warlords are at large.

Li Ling, a young peasant girl in China, flees to Malaya to escape being made a concubine to a warlord, only to find herself tricked into becoming a second wife to a rich man with sadistic tendencies. Her life becomes intertwined with that of her rescuer, Shao Peng, in a Malaya that is rapidly transforming under British rule.

A Flash of Water follows New Beginnings and together with Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest forms a quadrilogy, which traces the lives of one family against the turbulent political, economic and social changes in China and Malaya. The books are complete in themselves.