In 1942, Will Truesdale, an Englishman newly arrived in Hong Kong, falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their love affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Will is sent to an internment camp, where he and other foreigners struggle daily for survival. Meanwhile, Trudy remains outside, forced to form dangerous alliances with the Japanese—in particular, the malevolent head of the gendarmerie, whose desperate attempts to locate a priceless collection of Chinese art lead to a chain of terrible betrayals. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong and is hired by the wealthy Chen family as their daughter’s piano teacher. A provincial English newlywed, Claire is seduced by the heady social life of the expatriate community. At one of its elegant cocktail parties, she meets Will, to whom she is instantly attracted—but as their affair intensifies, Claire discovers that Will’s enigmatic persona hides a devastating past. As she begins to understand the true nature of the world she has entered, and long-buried secrets start to emerge, Claire learns that sometimes the price of survival is love.

“The rippling of past actions through to the present lends the narrative layers of intrigue and more than a few unexpected twists. Lee covers a little-known time in Chinese history without melodrama and deconstructs without judgment the choices people make in order to live one more day under torturous circumstances.” – Publisher’s Weekly

Every eight minutes in America, someone dies from a work injury or illness - more deaths than from most individual diseases. Depraved Indifference: The Workers’ Compensation System dissects a system that destroys the health and life of workers without fear of prosecution, or even public outcry, while throwing the preponderance of costs onto families and taxpayers. The stories in Depraved Indifference are the stories of ordinary people. Discarded and forgotten by their employers, denied medical coverage by the workers’ compensation insurer; many have been left to die, slowly and agonizingly, unnoticed by all but their grieving families. Depraved Indifference represents over five years of research and interviews. The final chapter lays out recommendations and strategies for action to bring justice and fairness, corporate accountability, and public disclosure to this system.

“Depraved Indifference by Patrice Woeppel is a well researched look at the failure of workers’ compensation laws to deliver the promise of fast, sure and adequate benefits based upon a no fault approach to compensating on-the-job injury and death. The numbers are staggering. It is an epidemic of death and economic destruction in the American workplace, unchecked by trial by jury to bring wrongdoers to the bar of justice.” -- Mark L. Zientz, Esq., Chair, Workers’ Compensation Section, Florida Bar Association.