China Business

China Business takes place four years after the ending of Forgetting Business. In 1894, Jindy Kelly arrives in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong at the height of the bubonic plague pandemic. She is searching for Johnny Fong, the boy she loved, and the truth about her mother's disappearance. Her plans are thrown into disarray when she encounters an old enemy from her home town, and becomes entangled in a murder investigation. Her quest propels her from the heart of the British colonial establishment to the festering animosity of the Chinese slums. She discovers that Johnny is now a revolutionary dedicated to overthrowing the Qing emperor; her mother may not be the person she believed; and the answers she seeks were always back in Australia in the workers' paradise of Kerosene Creek.

It is a story about a smart but naïve young woman, thrown into an alien culture and forced to sink or swim, to choose between jingoism and humanity, and to know herself. It is also about love and loss, and coming of age at a time when the world is changing for ever.