Chan Ling Yap 
Flash of Water 

The year is 1883. China is dithering on the verge of bankruptcy. In the countryside antagonism against foreigners and missionaries is growing and the warlords are at large. Li Ling, a young peasant girl in China, flees to Malaya to escape being made a concubine to a warlord only to find herself tricked into becoming a second wife to a rich man with sadistic tendencies. Her life becomes intertwined with that of her rescuer, Shao Peng, the daughter of a rich and powerful Chinese family that had established themselves in Malaya. Read about their lives in a Malaya that is rapidly transforming under British rule. A Flash of Water follows New Beginnings and together with Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest forms a quadrilogy, which traces the lives of one family against the turbulent political, economic and social changes in China and Malaya.