In a distant matriarchal land, a woman’s passions for two American brothers spell love and lust, jealousy and betrayal, in a suspenseful historical novel by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Last Rose of Shanghai.

1950s China. In a land of misty hot springs and star-kissed hills lives Lazo, a woman of the Moso people, who follow a matriarchal tradition where women freely choose their lovers and marriage doesn’t exist. Lazo, beautiful and free-spirited, longs to become a mother.

When two brothers, Noah and Adam Starlings, arrive stranded and starving, they are met with Lazo’s generosity. Adam, a charming artist with a restless heart, is intrigued by the no-marriage custom, but Noah, a physician with a traumatic past, values fidelity above all. As the brothers attempt to make sense of a world where men hold little power, they grow attracted to Lazo, deepening their fraught relationships, even as jealousy, betrayal, and a buried secret threaten to destroy them—and the lives of a generation to come.

Weaving in a multigenerational quest for the truth, this rare novel conjures a spellbinding story of freedom and forgiveness, breathing life into a vanishing culture while charting an inevitable clash between tradition and modernity.

© 2026 by Weina Dai Randel, all rights reserved.

<p>Weina Dai Randel is an award-winning, internationally bestselling author of six historical novels, including the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> bestseller <i>The Last Rose of Shanghai</i>, which was also optioned for film; <i>Night Angels</i>, which was long listed for the Massachusetts Book Awards; <i>The Master Jeweler</i>; and the Empress of Bright Moon duology. She is a winner of the RWA RITA Award, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards, and a two-time Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction nominee. Her novels have been translated into seventeen languages, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew. Weina lives in the Greater Boston area with her family. For more information, visit www.weinarandel.com.</p>