Forbidden City

A thrilling chronicle of valor and romance set against the blazing background of China's Boxer Rebellion in 1899.

Elizabeth Rowntree is suffocated by Philadelphia society and longs to know her missionary father, whom she has met but once. She travel to Peking, leaving her medical studies behind, eager to embark on a great new adventure in the Far East. What she finds is a troubled city on the brink of revolution---the Boxer Rebellion is engulfing the city, riddling the Imperial government with corruption, thwarting missionary work by fanning the mutual hatreds of Chinese and Westerners, and instilling panic in the Peking legations which harbor the foreign ambassadors. Her father is dead, brutally murdered at the hands of the rebels.

But even as Peking descends into the throes of the Boxer Rebellion there are two men---a dedicated Chinese physician and a hard-bitten American Marine---whose lives intertwine passionately with her own. Violence and bloodshed destroy the last vestiges of order in the besieged legations, but Elizabeth finds there is still much courage, strength, and even love to carry away from the ruins of the ancient city.