In 1949 China, just outside the Forbidden City, Chi and Lu, nine-year-old daughters of privilege are sheltered by a loving family, servants and exotic aunts, like opium-addicted Jade. The red revolution is rising just outside the walls of their cloister. Salvation will come in the forms of the crimson-clad nuns of Sacre Coeur, a charmed necklace, a mysterious green-eyed hawk, and Mao himself.
