A Hundred Suns

January 6, 2020
Tanabe (The Gilded Years) transports readers to the beauty and danger of 1930s Indochina in this stirring, elegant romance. American-born Jessie Lesage leaves Paris with her French husband, Victor, and their daughter, Lucie, in 1933 so that Victor, whose family owns the Michelin tire company, can oversee his family’s rubber plantations in Phu Rieng, Cochinchina. Once Jessie arrives in Hanoi, she meets Marcelle de Fabry, the wife of Arnaud de Fabry, a successful Hanoi financier. Marcelle introduces Jessie to the excesses of the colony, inviting Jessie onto a sailboat belonging to her lover, Khoi Nguyen, a silk scion and Communist sympathizer. After Jessie meets Hugh “Red” Redvers, a handsome British man working to expand the railroad in Indochina, Red gives her opium and encourages her to visit the rubber plantations to witness the conditions faced by the workers, which she had yet to see firsthand. As she tries to reconcile love for her husband with her newfound outrage at his industry’s abuses, her emotional torment and opium use lead to hallucinations. Tanabe’s richly drawn novel is complete with multidimensional characters who gradually reveal their secrets, leading Jessie to discover that her frequent bouts of confusion are not only caused by opium. Fans of historical fiction will be enthralled. Agent: Bridget Matzie, Aevitas Creative Management.

March 1, 2020
Just a month after moving to Hanoi in 1933, Jessie Lesage has lost her husband and daughter in the train station. Why will no one believe her? Why does everyone insist she arrived alone? Happily married to Victor, a lesser member of the renowned Michelin family, Jessie has transformed from the eldest child of impoverished Virginian parents into a polished Parisian socialite. With their young daughter, Lucie, she is eager to help her husband gain a stronger foothold in the family business by moving to French colonial Indochina, where Victor can personally oversee the rubber plantations and factories. Given the recent unrest among the workers, still derogatively called "coolies" in the 1930s, the Michelins need a strong hand to quell potential worker uprisings. Of course, Jessie has a few personal reasons for wanting to leave France, too, including her meddlesome mother-in-law and her own past. Once in Hanoi, the Lesages meet the French expatriates, including Arnaud de Fabry, a prominent financier, and his wife, Marcelle. A former fashion model-turned-bon vivant with an Indochinois silk tycoon for a lover, Marcelle quickly tucks Jessie under her wing. Soon, however, the shadows thicken. Not surprisingly, Victor does discover a communist overseer at one of the plantations. More strangely, on a business mission from Victor, Jessie witnesses a policeman (an officer eager to impress the Michelins) tossing the body of a tortured man into the streets, an event that sets in motion a plot of dastardly intent. Shifting focus back and forth between characters, Tanabe (The Diplomat's Daughter, 2017, etc.) reveals secrets in exquisitely paced steps--just when the reader thinks she knows who can be trusted, Tanabe's tale twists into another back alley, exposing another unexpected skeleton in a closet. With doubt clouding every corner, Tanabe ratchets up the tension as Marcelle seeks political and personal vengeance, and Jessie increasingly cannot tell reality from imagination. A smart, riveting psychological thriller.

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December 1, 2019
The sumptuous estate in French Indochina was worlds away from Jessie's impoverished upbringing in small-town Virginia. After marrying a relation of the Michelin family who is desperate to prove himself worthy of a place nearer the center of the family's tire empire, Jessie, her husband, and their young daughter move from France to oversee the family's rubber plantations. But troubles on the plantations are only the surface of a twisted tale of love, betrayal, and revenge. After Jessie meets Marcelle, a glamorous wife who is part of 1930s French society in Indochina, their initial friendship quickly sours as hidden aspects of the past begin to get dredged up, with their seemingly carefree lives shown to be nothing more than elaborate facades. Faced with an unexplainable illness and the sudden disappearance of her family, Jessie must determine whether closely kept secrets can be the key to her salvation. Stylish, with a dash of noir and heaps of the exotic and elegant setting, A Hundred Suns flips the script of bored society ladies into something altogether more devious and delicious.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)