|
The Far Side Of the Sky |
|
The Far Side Of The Sky On the eve of the Second World War, one family’s final hope lies across the world in Shanghai…
Available in bookstores and online now! Invite Dan to your book club to discuss his new novel!
“Combining his medical background with meticulous research, Daniel Kalla has written the best sort of historical fiction, in which individual lives are shaken by the tectonic forces of history—and then miraculously reconstructed.” —David Layton, author of The Bird Factory and Motion Sickness
“One is reminded of Michener and Clavell: both very good storytellers… whose readers deeply enjoyed them for the things they learned, the lives they were allowed to share and the histories they were privileged to glimpse. That’s storytelling, pure and simple.” —The National Post, October 7th, 2011
“Wartime Shanghai provides a magnificent canvas for Daniel Kalla to depict a world of people, religions and continents colliding. These are wonderful characters, and Sunny Mah is a heroine for the ages.” —Adam Lewis Schroeder, author of In the Fabled East and Empress of Asia
“Kalla’s surgeon-steady hand deftly keeps this story moving forward. Readers are sure to develop a genuine interest in the characters’ fates and also learn about an aspect of Second World War history they probably did not know before.” —The Vancouver Sun |
|
November 9, 1938—Kristallnacht—the Nazis unleash a night of terror for Jews all across Germany. Meanwhile, the Japanese Imperial Army continues to rampage through China and tighten its stranglehold on Shanghai, a besieged and divided city that becomes the last haven for thousands of desperate European Jews. Dr. Franz Adler, a renowned surgeon, is swept up in a wave of anti-Semitic violence washing over Vienna and flees to Shanghai with his daughter. At a refugee hospital, Franz meets an enigmatic nurse, Soon Yi “Sunny” Mah. The chemistry between them is intense and immediate. but Sunny’s life will soon be shattered when a drunken Japanese sailor attempts to rape her and instead murders her father. The danger escalates for Shanghai’s Jews as the Japanese ally themselves militarily with Germany and attack Pearl Harbor. Facing starvation, disease and the threat of internment—or worse—Franz struggles to keep the refugee hospital open while protecting his own family as he fights to outwit the Nazis and save the Jews from a terrible fate. The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish history when cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of the everyday quest for survival. |
|
Daniel discusses his new novel on Urban Rush |