DESCRIPTION

Mai-yeen and Rafaella Bardini emigrate from Rome, Italy, and plunge into life in America, the land of opportunity. The first friends they make are possibly crooked. The men Rafaella meets are far more aggressive than any of the Italian men she has known. Moreover, she has left Stefano behind in Italy, an agonizing separation for both. Go out, do things, meet men, he urges. I won't make you promise to wait for me. And so she tries to lead a normal life. All she truly wants is to get on with her education and to have Stefano with her. Stefano's own story is one of struggle to join her.

Then Mai-yeen makes a shattering discovery. The thieves who stole the Bardinis' money in Shanghai, China, are right here in San Francisco. Because of that grand theft, Rafaella and her parents departed the Communist regime with only a few dollars in their pockets. When her father died soon afterward, the survival of the Bardinis in Italy has been both a nightmare and the test of 18-year-old Rafaella's strength of character. Now, in America, she wants revenge on those thieves.

EXCERPT

"Her parents would have disapproved of the parties and boating and the dancing, yet these foreigners' ways of having a good time were not so different from those of the prosperous Chinese business class, most of whom spent their nights gambling and smoking opium. The late Twenties and the early Thirties, she recognized now, were unique for their mindless exploitation of what money could buy.

"Guido and Lily had frolicked and drunk and danced as much as anyone in their set. With her big feet, Lily had a danced a fair Charleston, and everyone had laughed to see her V-shaped top teeth exposed like a chicken beak..."

"I need you to help me," said Stefano, surveying his bowl of savory soup, steamed chicken with a special dipping sauce and a whole fish in a delicate sauce of ginger strips, green onions, and black beans; and Kwan-yin alone knew what was coming in the next courses. He would be on the floor by dessert.

"Oh, I will, young Stefano. None of it will go to waste. Ah-nee has discovered the freezer."

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Stone of Heaven can be ordered from:

amazon.com ~ barnesandnoble.com ~ iuniverse.com