Water Washes Earth

A love story shaped by history, tested by secrets, and haunted by the past.

Hong Kong, 1988. Lisa Li has lived many lives. A physics graduate from Oxford, a rising star in the Asian financial world, and the cherished daughter of a powerful Chinese Party leader, she now inhabits the uneasy space between East and West. To her colleagues, she is brilliant. To her parents, she is ta future leader ofChina. But to herself, she is still trying to understand who she really is—especially when it comes to love and identity..

James, an American,  seeking purpose in a changing Asia, never expected to fall for someone like Lisa: poised, self-assured, magnetic. Their connection is instant. But what begins as a passionate romance soon deepens into something far more complex—filled with silences, half-truths, and questions neither dares to ask.

As the 1997 handover of Hong Kong looms, political tensions mount, and secrets from Lisa's past resurface: exile, betrayal, and a harrowing chapter from the Cultural Revolution she has never fully shared. When James discovers that British intelligence may be watching her—and that Lisa's father is one of the most powerful men in China—trust begins to fracture.

Told in lyrical prose with cinematic scope, Water Washes Earth is a novel about identity, loyalty, and the emotional cost of secrets. Set between Beijing, Oxford, Hong Kong, and Hangzhou, it follows two lovers from vastly different worlds as they navigate the shifting lines between freedom and duty, history and memory, love and loss.

For readers of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Pachinko, and The Garden of Evening Mists, this is a sweeping and intimate story of one woman's journey to reclaim her voice—and one man's struggle to understand the woman he loves before it's too late.

What would you sacrifice to protect the one you love? And what if love itself became the greatest risk of all?