[1970s setting + sweet romance + raising a child + mystery-solving + two capable leads]
In 1973, Gu Yanzhou, a burly veteran, found a woman by the river. She was too beautiful to look real, yet covered in wounds. Her eyes were vacant, and she neither cried nor smiled, like an exquisite wooden doll.
The villagers called her the “River Goddess” and said she was an ill omen. Gu Yanzhou stood up to the opposition and brought her home. From then on, his household had a “wooden wife” who did nothing but daydream and keep clean.
Gu Yanzhou thought he'd picked up a burden. He never expected that...
When someone bullied his son, she would silently step in front of him, scaring the brat away with an icy stare.
When the family ran out of money, she could use the scraps of memory she retained to draw complex, precise mechanical blueprints and earn them a fortune.
When a mysterious force from distant Kyoto tracked her down in their little mountain village, everyone thought the Gu family was doomed.
But the “wooden beauty,” Su Nian, merely stared coldly at the visitors and spoke the first complete sentence she'd managed since losing her memory: “Tell my father the useless people he sent couldn't even find me.”
Only then did Gu Yanzhou realize that his delicate, quiet wife was a top big shot who had vanished from Kyoto!
And without realizing it, he had become her weakness and the one thing she would defend at all costs.
