Customer Reviews

China Diaries: A novel

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Louis Stannard pounces onto the scene of excellent fiction authors with this, his first novel CHINA DIARIES, and if this superb book is an indication of other works to come, Stannard is destined to be a best selling new author of popular highly charged action/intrigue/romance novels.

It is refreshing to encounter a first novel of such range and capable writing. CHINA DIARIES is a beautifully crafted novel that not only tells a terrific story, it also brings to light a portion of history that has been buried in the history books. Stannard's main character Stephen Cannon is engaged in a detective mystery that focuses on his parents and his perception of his mother, one Anna Boreisha, a Russian émigré from Shanghai and Nanking, who deserted him shortly after his birth to return to China.

The bulk of the novel takes place in the latter part of 1941 when the Japanese bombed the Western Coast of China including Hong Kong and the many islands in the Pacific (Pearl Harbor, Wake, Guam, etc) on their way to mirroring in Asia what Hitler was accomplishing in Europe. It is during this time of terror that Alex Cannon, a Pan AM pilot, meets Anna, they fall in love, marry, and become pregnant with Stephen. The remainder of the story is how the couple returns to the USA and the way their lives merge and dissipate after that.

But this is not just a significant love story, it is a deeply researched study of WW II as it affected the US intervention into the war following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a very informative and extended expose' of how the Japanese carried out a Chinese genocide (the Rape of Nanking is only a small example) and how this has remained a controversial and occult secret throughout history. And as if that weren't enough to peak the interest of any reader, Stannard explores the dissolution of Tsarist Russia and the subsequent rise of the Bolsheviks and Communism that drove Anna's family to flee to China as a country that would accept them without passports. This is Anna's past and brings to the novel the plight of the Russian émigrés. Rarely has the history of the Whites versus the Reds during the Russian Revolution been so succinctly and beautifully described.

If this sounds like a lot of information for a novel to carry, then reading this book will prove the gifts of Louis Stannard, for he is able to tightly weave details from history into a fictional search for family identity in a manner too infrequently encountered in young novelists. This is a remarkable book, begging for a screenplay adaptation, and is a class calling card for an exceptional talent. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, April 05

Oftentimes, one can learn more about the past from a work of historical fiction than from an academic or journalistic textbook. History can tell you what happened, but good historical fiction can take you there and let a part of you experience it for yourself. China Diaries is an extraordinarily good work of historical fiction, providing readers with an illuminating window into the World War II experience of China. For whatever reason, the extent of the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers on the Chinese people has never seemed to register properly in the public consciousness - then or now. In the 1930s, the world turned a blind eye to Japanese aggression, despite the absolute horrors of atrocities such as the rape of Nanking. Louis Stannard wants to tell this neglected story of the war, and he succeeds admirably in doing so. Stannard also brings to light an even more neglected aspect of World War II, one I was completely unfamiliar with - namely, the important contributions of Pan Am's small fleet of Clipper boat planes in the Chinese theater of war. As an experienced pilot himself, Stannard does an impeccable job explaining the realities of aviation in that era, and that lends the story a pervasive air of authenticity. Of course, a good historical novel also has to have a good story, and China Diaries features a truly compelling one full of romance, danger, heroism, betrayal, and personal discovery.

Stephen Cannon never knew his parents, both of whom died during World War II. The only connection he has with them is in the form of the journals they left behind, journals he calls the China Diaries because they describe the life of his parents in China in the late 1930s. His father was a pilot who flew for the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC), while his mother was a Russian émigré from Shanghai who worked for the CNAC, married his father against the backdrop of the opening hostilities in Hong Kong, and - for reasons Stephen never understood - left her newborn baby in the States in order to return to China in the early 1940s, whereupon she disappeared. Fifty years later, a young Chinese exchange student contacts Stephen out of the blue and tells him that his great-uncle has information about his mother, Anna Boreisha Cannon, and is eager to share it with him - in fact, the man claims to owe his very life to Anna. Soon, Stephen is on his way to Hong Kong, hoping to finally learn the enigmatic secrets of his mother's extraordinary life.

This is really Anna's story, and it is a truly remarkable one. Some of it comes in the form of her journal entries, but most of it is presented in standard narrative form. Life as a young Russian girl in Shanghai held little promise in the 1930s, but Anna's father saw to it that his daughter was highly educated. That education provided the means for her to get a job with the CNAC and escape her home town when the Japanese invaded. Anna spent the rest of her life seemingly running just ahead of the invading Japanese army. She was in Hong Kong when it was attacked, she witnessed the horrors of the rape of Nanking, and she desperately sought to get word of the Japanese atrocities out to the rest of the world, naively believing they would come to China's aid if they only knew what was really taking place at the murderous hands of the Japanese. While she was in Hong Kong, she met and fell in love with American pilot Alex Cannon, and the reader is treated to an intimate look at their loving relationship as seen against the backdrop of war. Now following his mother's footsteps in Hong Kong and China, Stephen finally learns the remaining history of the mother he never knew. It all makes for a powerful story, one quite capable of changing lives even in the here and now.

China Diaries paints an incredibly revealing portrait of China during the decade of Japanese aggression. It is an ugly time of war, prejudice, treason, betrayal, and mass murder, yet it also extols the incredible bravery of extraordinary women such as Anna and the men of the CNAC who continued to support the Chinese people as best they could in their time of need. This is the story of World War II as it played out on the other side of the globe, a story made no less horrifying by its lack of German concentration camps or sadistic storm troopers. The historical events making up the foundation of this novel did actually happen. The rest of the world, as typified by the League of Nations, ignored the plight of a suffering people in the 1930s and thereby helped bring about the global conflagration of World War II and the later scourge of Communism to the world's most populous country. One must never ignore the horrors of man's inhumanity to man because such horrors will not end until good men somewhere work up the fortitude to take it upon themselves to stop it. China Diaries is not about the U.S. war effort that eventually turned the tides of war, but it does offer insights into the reluctance of America to join the noble fight up until everything changed on a peaceful Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor. We must learn from the mistakes of the past, and China Diaries - besides telling an incredibly gripping story - makes for an excellent and very instructive history lesson for us all.

The author takes up the challenge to chronicle the history of the Pacific War in Asia, which still remains essentially unknown to the West. Americans simply lack vital information about our own role in the war against Japan. Stannard uses the Historical Novel model, placing his characters in real events of the past.

The book has two main characters, Anna and Stephen, a mother and her son. Anna, a Russian woman growing up in Shanghai in the thirties, creates a written record of the Japanese invasion and occupation of mainland China, the diaries of the title. In this novel, Anna literally lives the horrors and atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Army invasion. The son, Stephen, was conceived in China, and is separated from his parents. His father, Alex, a pilot for Pan American World Airways, flying the fabled China Clipper routes between Oakland and Hong Kong, meets and falls in love with Anna, who works for the China National Aviation Corporation. CNAC, the actual first passenger and freight airline in China, hires Anna and her brother for administrative positions in development of mainland routes.

The novel sets itself a difficult task: How to weave themes of the Japanese invasion of China, US politics before and during WW II, Chinese political intrigue, a nascent Chinese airline industry, and the contemporary efforts of the current Japanese government to suppress history. The author, himself a commercial pilot, wraps Anna's and Stephen's personalities around these developments and makes them central figures of this history. His method is multiple flash backs and flash forwards, moving the story along through the voices of Anna and Alex, and finally of Stephen.

The novel opens with Stephen in possession of parts of his mother's diaries together with his father's pilot logbooks. He learns that a large part of the dairies, however, thought to be lost, have surfaced in possession of an aged Hong Kong Chinese. These documents are an important part of the full historical record of the Japanese occupation, providing details of atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. To put the family history together, Stephen flies to Hong Kong to secure the missing diaries.

As the novel proceeds, the reader is taken on a wild ride through scenes that vividly describe the savage cruelty of the Japanese in China. Historical themes, all too familiar to Asian American families, but largely unknown or forgotten by the general population, are explored by the author. Everything from the 1931 invasion to germ warfare to civilian massacres in China to POW mistreatment by the Japanese Imperial Army.

For example, a climactic 1938 episode details the dramatic nighttime rescue of Anna by a daredevil CNAC pilot, Moon Chin, with a seaplane on a wide stretch of the Yangtze River. Anna had just escaped the Rape of Nanking, where she helped the Nanjing Safety Committee thwart attempted rape by marauding Japanese soldiers.

Moon Chin is a real person, a former CNAC pilot who lives today in San Mateo, California. Capt. Chin has told the real seaplane rescue story many times. This is just one example of how Louis Stannard uses real people, places, and events to tell a compelling and heroic tale.

The novel ends with a confrontation between Stephen and Japanese government thugs sent to intercept his mission to regain the diaries and preserve history.

China Diaries is one of the few books that is appealing to both men and women. In my household there is the female reading list, and the male reading list. This book made it to both piles. As a woman, I enjoyed the female lead, her education/career/romance opportunities, during a fascinating time in history. I really enjoyed the aeronautical aspects of flying across such vast areas without today's technology. I like the PanAm history and development and the fictional story with WWII as a backdrop.

When the Imperial Japanese Army occupied the city of Nanking, China on December 13, 1937, the barbarity that followed should sicken the soul of any decent human being. Operating from the position that the Chinese were subhuman and thus outside of any considerations of decency, the soldiers in the occupying force embarked on a reign of terror that lasted for weeks. By the time the massacre ended, it is estimated that some 300,000 innocent civilians perished from gunshot wounds, stabbings, rapes, decapitations, and assorted other cruelties. Up until a few years ago--some would say up to the present--the activities of the Japanese military in China rarely received adequate attention. Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" helped bring this incident to the fore, and it also revealed how certain elements in present day Japan are attempting to whitewash their country's involvement in the affair. Unfortunately for the revisionists, photographic evidence as well as some film lensed by a missionary in the city shows all too clearly the aftermath of the atrocities. If you've ever seen these pictures, you already know the mind-blasting horrors that took place in the city. If you haven't seen them, think of the footage shot in the concentration camps in Europe.

Where does this introduction lead? To Louis Stannard's "China Diaries," a self-published novel that unfolds in part against the backdrop of the Nanking massacre. The story begins in 1994 by introducing us to a pilot named Stephen Cannon, a basically decent guy who never knew his parents because they both perished during World War II. All he has to remember them by--aside from recollections told to him by his father's parents--is the "China Diaries," a collection of journal entries penned by his mother Anna Boreisha and the flight logs kept by his father Alex. Much of the material appears to be missing, but the writings Stephen does possess led him to conclude long ago that his Russian mother likely abandoned him in order to head back to China to be with his father. As he soon discovers, however, nothing could be further from the truth. A phone call Stephen receives from a young Asian law student one day leads him on a quest to recover his mother's missing diaries, and also leads to important revelations about his parents and about the Japanese atrocities committed in China before and during World War II. His quest also lands him in hot water with a Japanese organization dedicated to keeping evidence of the massacre out of the hands of the western press.

Anna's missing journals come into play much later in the book, after we learn about her background, how she met Alex Cannon, and how the two fled the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. Boreisha's family, White Russians who settled in China after the Bolsheviks took over, strive to give their daughter a decent upbringing in a country that has little use for them. Anna's father insists that his daughter learn several languages, study history and current events, and stay away from the nightclubs and brothels were most Russian girls must work to survive in a hostile environment. Her knowledge coupled with her extraordinary physical appearance soon finds her working for CNAC, a division of Pan American that provides air service throughout China. But even as Anna works her way up through the ranks of this company, events emerge that entangle her in the shadowy world of espionage. The Americans, Germans, and Japanese are all operating within China, and all sides wish to find out what the others are doing. Events unfold quickly: Anna must flee both the Japanese and those seeking to punish her for spying, she plays a role in rescuing Chinese citizens in Nanking, escapes from the city, meets Alex Cannon, and flies around the world shortly after the outbreak of World War II.

"China Diaries" offers up romance, action, and intrigue without missing a beat. The book runs roughly 450 pages, giving Stannard plenty of time to fully flesh out his characters and the myriad situations they find themselves in. Too, the author shifts time frames, from 1994 to the 1930s and back again, quite effectively. Most of the story focuses on Anna Boreisha's adventures, and it does so in a way that charms the reader. I soon began to care about what happened to this brave young lady, especially after she ends up working for the international relief agencies in Nanking during the height of the Japanese atrocities. This section of the book brings into sharp focus the grinding horrors visited upon the native population, personalizes it if you will, and it's probably what I'll remember most about the book even though it isn't the central aspect of the story. I don't know an enormous amount of specifics about Nanking, but what I did know before I cracked Stannard's book meshes pretty well with what he presents. "China Diaries" concludes with a selected bibliography at the back of the book for those interested in reading more about Pan American's flight operations in the Pacific as well as the Nanking massacre.

There are a few slight problems with the novel, primarily several awkward sentences and some typos that occasionally interrupt the flow of the story, but nothing serious enough to ruin the experience. And "China Diaries" is an experience, an often brutal experience tempered by a very real humanity and even a dose of good old-fashioned redemption that makes the book a fascinating read. I don't think it is out of order to offer up a round of applause to Louis Stannard for bringing further attention to a series of events that still remain clouded in needless controversy and obscurity. I truly hope this book reaches as wide an audience as possible.

For anyone interested in the days leading up to the US involvement in WWII, anyone interested in the Clipper Flying Boat of the 30's and 40's, this book is a must read. The author brings the characters and locations to life. You won't want to put the book down just wondering what happens next. Love, drama, action, suspense, and a little humor is all there. Excellent book, highly recommended, five stars.

It was like reading Casablanca or the Winds of War except it took place in thirties China. I kept turning the pages to the last to find out what happened to the compelling characters. A must read for anyone interested in this genre of fiction.

OK, so let's say I'd an interest in both the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz space mission and the murder of millions of Cambodians by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the mid-70s, and had the dubious idea of writing a novel incorporating the two topics. How would I go about stitching these two wildly disparate themes together?

In CHINA DIARIES, author Louis Stannard's intent is to educate the reader about Pan American's trans-Pacific service to the Orient via its China Clipper flying boats in the latter half of the 1930s, as well as to lay bare the barbarisms perpetuated by the Japanese military against the Chinese of Nanking between December 1937 and March 1938.

This book's timeline, straightened out by me for simplicity's sake, begins in Shanghai in 1936, where 18-year old Anna Boreisha lives with her parents, members of the Russian aristocracy forced to flee their country by the Bolshevik Revolution and now living in China as undocumented expatriates. Anna gets a job with the Chinese National Airline Corporation (CNAC), a Pan Am subsidiary. As the Japanese invade China in the mid-1930s, Anna witnesses first hand the invader's horrific Rape of Nanking. The young woman escapes, washing up, still employed with CNAC, in Hong Kong, where she meets Pan American Second Officer Alex Cannon. The two are married on December 8th during the initial stages of the Japanese assault on the Crown Colony, and a day after Pearl Harbor. Alex decides to take his new wife back to the States, and they flee by flying west to New York on a China Clipper marooned in Asia by the war's outbreak. Back in America, Anna soon gives birth to a son, Stephen, whom she immediately leaves behind with her in-laws to return to Southeast Asia to be near Alex, now flying military supplies over The Hump, and to try and extricate her parents from Shanghai. Anna disappears in China in 1942. Conveniently, Anna is a dedicated diarist, and she leaves journals scattered all over the world, and which serve to tie the plot together.

Stannard's timeline is overly complex. He begins his story in 1994 with an adult Stephen Cannon, a pilot with Trans Artic Airlines. Stephen has his mother's diaries from late 1941 to just prior to her disappearance. In New York, he's contacted by a young Chinese student whose great-uncle, just escaped from Red China, once facilitated Anna's escape from Nanking, and who claims has more of her journals. As Stephen wings his way to Hong Kong to meet the old man, the author switches to late 1941 and relates the love story and freedom flight to the US of Anna and Alex. Then, switching back to 1994, Stephen collects Anna's diaries from 1936 to 1938, to which time Stannard returns with Anna's story for that period. Then, jumping forward again to 1994, Stephen discovers yet more of his mother's journals written after her "disappearance", as well as witnesses to her activities immediately prior, and the storyline ends with those events. All the while in the 1994 "present", Stephen is menaced by agents of an ultra-nationalist Japanese organization wishing to suppress evidence of the Nanking atrocities.

CHINA DIARIES was not a book I couldn't put down. As a matter of fact, it was So Not A Book I Couldn't Put Down, that I did just that to read another trashy novel that was much more engaging.

Though CHINA DIARIES is occasionally interesting to the extent that it describes Pan Am's Clipper operations and the Japanese Army's capture and occupation of Nanking, the book has significant problems. First, it's way too convoluted; a straightforward plot evolution focusing on Anna from 1936 to 1943, intersecting with Alex and Pan Am as a subcharacter and subplot respectively, would've better served. The 1994 "present" with Stephen was entirely unnecessary, in my opinion. Most damaging, however, was the cookie-cutter sameness of all the characters, and a plot that positively dragged between the occasional interesting bits. Let me explain the former by digressing for just a paragraph to make an analogy...

John Wayne was one of Hollywood's greatest entertainers, but he was a lousy actor. The Duke imparted no unique identity to any of his characters in his many films; they all simply played John Wayne under different names and in different costumes.

Though I applaud Stannard's effort - I certainly couldn't even begin to write a novel, but only pen amateurish and superficial reviews - all of his characters in this book "sound" the same. In any work of fiction, this negative attribute drives me nuts. All of the author's text, I suspect, derives from and reflects the personality of Stannard, and each fictional character is created simply by inserting quotation marks, attaching a different name, and switching to a first person grammatical construction. These techniques, by themselves, don't create interesting or engaging personae.

If, as a reader, I wanted to learn more about Pan Am's China Clipper service and/or the Rape of Nanking, I suspect I'd have been better served by picking up one of the non-fiction histories referenced by the author in his concluding "Acknowledgements". Despite Stannard's laudably extensive historical knowledge that was the basis for CHINA DIARIES, I invested too much time on this book and got back too little.

When wartime massacres are mentioned to most people in the west, their first and generally only thought is about the holocaust and the extermination of the Jews perpetrated by the Nazis. However, to one-fifth of the people in the world, their first thought is the actions of the Japanese troops in China. The so-called "Rape of Nanking" is more literal than most people realize. To the Japanese, the Chinese people were subhuman and thousands of women were raped and killed. It was not just soldiers running amok, but a deliberate policy of genocide perpetrated by the Japanese government.
Few people outside of Asia or history departments that teach Asian history know that there was a war between China and Japan that had lasted for years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese also conducted horrific medical experiments on human subjects and carried out tests of biological warfare agents in China. The Japanese have never truly admitted to their actions in China and in just the last few weeks, there have been violent anti-Japanese riots in China. These riots are a response to books that seem to argue that the Japanese troops did not commit the level of atrocities that are claimed and it is clear that the Chinese government encourages them.
This book is about an American man (Stephen Cannon) who was raised by his grandparents and whose father was a pilot killed in World War II. For reasons he does not know; his mother left him with his grandparents, went back to China during the war, and then simply disappeared. He manages to acquire the diaries she wrote while in China and he learns that his parents were quite extraordinary. His father was a pilot for Pan Am on the pioneering flying boat flights across the Pacific. However, his mother was an amazing woman. Born into the privilege of the Russian aristocracy, her family became stateless and fled to China after the Bolsheviks took power in Russia.
These people were forced to take whatever work they could find, with many of the women turning to prostitution. Her father demanded that she make something of herself, so she became fluent in several languages and became a master in several Chinese martial arts. These skills serve her well as she is able to gain employment as a translator for the Pan Am airline. It is here where she meets her future husband.
The action really begins when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong. She uses all of her language and fighting skills in surviving the Japanese attack and rescuing others from being raped to death. The newly married couple completes an aerial trip around the world, but international espionage causes her to return to China.
The best historical fiction is fiction only because the characters didn't really exist, even though somebody most likely did what they do in the book. That phrase describes this book, China was one of the few havens for Russians fleeing the Bolshevik terror, the Japanese were brutal in their actions in China and all indications are that the description of the Pan Am flights are accurate to the finest detail. Stannard also tells it very well. You are caught up in the action as his parents try to love, survive and make a life when death and destruction is everywhere, immediate and there are few options open to them. There is also an underlying subplot, where modern Japanese are trying to suppress any evidence of the Japanese atrocities in China, even to the point where they try to buy the diaries. In the end, Stephen Cannon buries his bitterness towards his mother, realizing that she did what she had to do at a time when many people were forced to make sacrifices and do extraordinary things.