PETALUMA, Calif., May 26, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Throughout Asia, European and Japanese imperialism reached its height. Japan occupied Korea, brutally snuffing out its independence while advancing into Manchuria as its first step in conquering all of China. The first book of author Paul Selinger's fascinating Dragon's Wake trilogy, In the Dragon's Wake, gives readers a flashback into the last century's struggles of the oppressed for freedom.
In the final years of the 19th century, violence and turmoil led to the collapse of China's Qing Dynasty. Valeda Duval, a beautiful and independent French colonialist, and Kyung-su Lee, a Korean minister stationed in Peking, fall in love after he saves her life during the bloody Boxer Rebellion. Breaking racial and societal taboos on both sides, they remain together and have a son.
Minister Lee, suddenly a man without a country, must go into exile. This is a remarkable story of how he transforms himself from a traditional aristocrat, a Confucian-trained royalist and servant of his king, into a radical leader of the anti-Japanese resistance and secret arms buyer for the liberation movement. All the while Lee raises his mixed-race son to be a patriot and future leader of the resistance. However, conflict threatens his family while anarchy cripples China.
Visit the wars of imperialism and resistance, the love and heroism of the eastern world, during the 1800-1900s through these memorable fictional characters in the real history of that challenging period, In the Dragon's Wake. For more information, log on to www.Xlibris.com.
About the Author
Paul Selinger has more than thirty years' experience in Asia. He lived in Seoul, Korea, and Hong Kong, where he worked for the International Rescue Committee in a Chinese refugee development program for craftsmen. Later, he taught painting and sculpture for four and a half years at the University of Hong Kong. Mr. Selinger became well-known as a sculptor by the mid 1960s, and was internationally recognized in 1969 for his design and construction of a large and unique sculpture park. The park was later filmed by a London film company and shown around the world on TV satellite on the grand opening of Hong Kong's satellite hookup to the world.
He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a BA, and earned an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute while studying Mandarin at the same time at the San Francisco State University. He has previously published Men Surviving Menopause, You and the Woman You Love at Midlife, a guide for men in relationships with women as they enter their middle years. It is available on the Internet.
In The Dragon's Wake * by Paul E. Selinger
Book One
Publication Date: June 29, 2006
Trade Paperback; $19.54; 369 pages; 978-1-4257-0658-6
Cloth Hardback; $29.69; 369 pages; 978-1-4257-0659-3
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For more information, contact Xlibris at (888) 795-4274 or on the web at www.Xlibris.com.