During the late 1800's in China, when the country was overrun with opium and prostitution, Anna Marie Thompson was orphaned at a young age. Desperate for a parent, when a colleague of her father's comes to visit, she quickly adopts him as her own. But her adopted father comes with a high price. He gets her addicted to opium at a young age and in order to support her deadly habit, she becomes a drug runner for him. Tired of the uncertain life of a runner, Anna's determined to get away from her adoptive father and her opium addiction, only to run afoul with the emperor's enforcer, a man who's vowed to kill all those involved in the drug and prostitution business.

From the moment he sees her, Tau Zhi-Gang knows Anna is going to change his life. For that reason alone, he's prepared to kill her the instant he meets her. Even as the emperor's enforcer, Zhi-Gang cannot kill without cause. To give legal cause to punish her with death, he marries Anna; for once she becomes his wife, he can kill her with no one giving it even a second thought. No matter how hard he tries, he just can't bring himself to harm her. Even finding out she's an opium addict and a drug runner, the two things he finds most vile, doesn't change the fact he's falling in love with her. With Anna's knowledge of the opium trade, Zhi-Gang can track down his missing sister, who was sold into prostitution by his parents when he was ten years old. She can also help him get far in his quest to stop the flow of opium into his country, but the temptation of the addictive drug may be too much for Anna to handle. Will their love be enough to help her defeat her addiction?

Every so often you read a book that truly touches you in ways you never imagined a book could. Jade Lee has written an incredibly poignant story with heart wrenching characters that survive horrors that most of us couldn't even dream of. Anna is an amazingly strong heroine who's short life has seem more tragedy than all of Shakespeare's plays. Yet the story doesn't dwell on it. That's what I find so amazing about this book. All these horrors have been committed in the heroine's life but the book is a celebration of her triumph's and her love. Zhi-Gang is the perfect man for her. He has his own demons to struggle with but he's not the typical angst ridden hero. They compliment each other and it makes for an incredibly moving story of love and survival. Regardless of what sort of genre you may typically read, I would urge anyone to read this book. You won't be disappointed.