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In this espionage-laden family epic (Vanity Fair), an ordinary housewife becomes an unlikely spyand her dark secrets will test even the most unbreakable ties.

Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantaras family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.

Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-c