Who Says a Republican-Era Socialite Can't Be a Scientist?

Someone once told Yu Zeyong that women couldn’t study physics. Yu Zeyong didn’t agree. She got into Jiaotong University’s physics department and graduated at the top of her class.

Her childhood sweetheart, the older boy next door to whom she was informally engaged, once begged her to go with him to Taiwan. She refused and resolutely returned to mainland China, devoting herself to the nation’s space program under an assumed name.

Many years later, when a reporter asked her to look back on a life spanning nearly seventy years, she simply said, “I did whatever the country needed me to do.”

[Republican-era socialite + aerodynamics expert + aerospace engineer. The heroine has two romances. Not for readers who dislike that.]

[The heroine is not a perfect, saintly person, and in extraordinary times she sometimes has to make compromises. Not for readers who dislike that.]

[Set against real history, with real historical figures appearing. The heroine and the families and friends around her are not based on real people, so please don’t try to identify them.]