Operation Lotus Sunday

Are they tourists, or are they smugglers and spies?

Roger and Sandra Brownwell, American expatriates on an around-the-world vacation with their two preschool children, are scheduled for two weeks across China. It’s 1983, only two years after China opened to tourism. They are looking forward to the tour, a once in a lifetime opportunity neither dreamed of even a year before: the Great Wall, the Stone Forest, the terracotta soldiers, and the giant pandas await them.

But in Hong Kong a missionary friend talks them into smuggling Chinese Bibles and delivering them in Beijing. So they add that to their already sizable amount of luggage and crammed itinerary. And in Guangzhou they talk to the wrong Chinese man, and in so doing send him away from where the CIA was going to extract him. When confronted by the CIA, they feel they must agree to go to extraordinary lengths to help save the man.

"Operation Lotus Sunday" follows the Brownwells through China as they try to right the wrong they unwittingly did, and save a young man’s life while not ripping apart their marriage that was already under strain—traveling with rambunctious children and under the scrutiny of the Chinese government. From Guangzhou to Guilin to Kunming to the Stone Forest to Chengdu to Xian to Beijing, Operation Lotus Sunday provides plenty of danger, temptation, sights, and intimate possibilities.
From the book:
"Hey, you're in a Communist country. . . You need to play this part now just as much as I do. You think I want this? I was traveling with a gorgeous woman and had great sex with her every day we worked together. Now I'm traveling with Bible-thumping Mommy.