A new multicultural romance novel you must read in 2024

sweeping saga of three extraordinary women who dreamed large and loved family

The 1970s. What a tumultuous decade. We were reading The Joy of Sex, smoking pot, experimenting with wife-swapping parties, at least until the fearfully clever Germaine Greer came along with her Female Eunuch and changed everything. The Beatles broke up and Elvis died, Watergate unravelled, Gough Whitlam had his moment in the sun, Maggie Thatcher appeared, and Microsoft and Apple were invented.

Two of the world’s greatest catastrophes also happened during the 70s. They took place in Australia’s backyard and went by unnoticed by most people. The first, China’s Cultural Revolution and famine, killed more people than World War 1. China’s phoenix was to rise from her ashes, reborn as an economic superpower.

The second happened in Cambodia, the Land of Wonder, home to the gentle Khmer people. We continued with distractions while this fabled land was ravaged under the brutal hand of Pol Pot and two million Khmer men, women, and children, plus a few Australians as it happened, were executed in the Killing Fields, or perished from starvation, disease, and overwork. Unlike China, Cambodia remains one of the poorest countries on Earth. Adding to its woes, or because of them, Cambodia is the hub of the most evil industry imaginable, the trafficking of children for sex.

At the time, the author was involved in another 1970s best-seller, the Vietnam War, a country with borders to both China and Cambodia. He saw the Cambodian genocide unfold from his place of work in the labyrinthine waterways of the Mekong Delta. Later, he lived in China for many years. He believes immersing himself in the histories of these two introverted countries changed his life.

The Diary of Katy Yehonala is a story of love embracing three generations of amazing women who stood strong and proud against the challenges and tragedies those tumultuous times threw against them. The storyteller is May-ling, later to become Katy. Katy, her mother, and Clara, each have their destinies forged by those times. Their extraordinary lives mirror their homeland’s rocky coming of age.

The three women, are, in a way, “universal women,” struggling to cast aside their cultural millstones, each to travel the world along their separate paths like modern-day Marco Polo’s, eventually to honour the humanity they share.

A story of three generations of extraordinary women whose lives were forged in the bloodiest era of China’s history.

The novel tells the story of three women who lifted their gaze beyond their turbulent past, each to fulfil unique destinies.

• the first is a proud matriarch who believes honouring family is worth any sacrifice.
• the second senses destiny’s hand tugging her sleeve in a love story for all time.
• the third soars to breathtaking heights on the world stage, a mother’s selfless love beneath her wings.

Read a preview HERE