Love Amid the Flames of War: A Chinese Laborer and a French Girl's Promise for Half a Lifetime

During World War I, Hua Chengli stood vigil in the smoke of Verdun, saving a young German painter and meeting the love of his life, Sophie. A telegram summoned him home in haste. “Wait for me,” he said, and wait she did, for twenty-six years. From the bloody battles in Outer Mongolia to fourteen years of resistance against Japan, he defended his homeland through a hail of bullets, with room in his heart for only one French woman. In 1945, the war against Japan finally ended. He traveled to Paris, only to become caught up in a shocking mystery after a night of drunkenness: a final battlefield letter on the wall, children who appeared out of nowhere, and a secret entrusted to him by an old friend at the cost of his life. Layer by layer, the heaviest lie of a chaotic age is revealed. He traded half a lifetime of military service for peace at home, and spent twenty-six years keeping a promise. War tore the land apart, and time turned his hair white. He survived life and death and crossed thousands of miles, all to keep a reunion that came half a lifetime late. In an age woven with espionage and gun smoke, he defended his country with unyielding courage and waited for his beloved with unwavering devotion, writing a moving story of love and country in a turbulent era.