The Bridge of a Hundred Dragons — Emma Drummond

"You'll never be an artist until you have suffered, Miss Mostyn, and dancing on tables or smoking cigarettes in imitation of men is no substitute, believe me."

From the moment Alexandra Mostyn, aspiring painter and emancipated Bright Young Thing of 1920s Shanghai society, literally bumps into Major Mark Rawlings of the Royal Engineers, she starts to learn what it is to suffer. Mark, haunted by terrible memories of the Russian Civil War and of the beautiful woman he loved and lost, arrives in Shanghai to investigate and rebuild a collapsed railway bridge; but he comes under extreme pressure from Alexandra's ruthless father to falsify his report, and at the site of the bridge itself has to contend with a violent colleague, and hostile coolies who believe that the place is protected by legendary dragons.

As Mark struggles to complete the bridge, he has to fight his attraction for Alexandra, who alternately angers and delights him, and with the reappearance in his life of Marie, and aristocratic Russian emigree, he finds himself painfully torn between the rival claims of his past and present loves. But personal troubles are swept aside as the three are tragically caught up in the rapid advance of the Kuomintang revolutionary army and violence intrudes shockingly on all their lives.

Based on true accounts and memoirs of the Shanghai emergency of 1927, THE BRIDGE OF A HUNDRED DRAGONS is a gripping story of love, heroism and tortured human relationships set against the background of an exotic and mysterious country.