Charlotte Stewart, a feisty 15-year-old American, arrives in 1870 Shanghai to join her missionary parents, who have successfully cured the population of southern China from their opium addiction. No sooner does Charlotte descend the gangplank when she is informed by a cruel, sociopathic girl named Lavinia Wardlow that her beloved parents are dead. (Years later, Charlotte learns that Lavinia's father, the powerful tai-pan Amos Wardlow, along with Augustus Nolan, a degenerate minister, and the evil Manchu prince Yung-Wah had the Stewarts murdered because of their success in weaning the Chinese off opium and upsetting the balance of power in China.)
Charlotte is given shelter by Ian Dickson, an English doctor, who takes pity on the orphaned child. A tall, buck-toothed amah named Doh-Tzi arrives and explains she was the servant of Charlotte's parents. Doh-Tzi becomes part of the household and educates Charlotte and the good doctor in the ways of the Orient. Unable to pronounce Charlotte, she renames her mistress Shar-Li.
While visiting the Chinese section of Shanghai, Charlotte is kidnapped by orphan traffickers and sold to the French nuns in the remote city of Tientsin. When the convent is set aflame in a massacre engineered by Prince Yung Wah, the girl's life is spared by Doh-Tzi, who has never given up in her effort to rescue Shar-Li.
Doh-Tzi takes the American girl to the safety of her brother, the pirate Ling Fang. Descended from Ming royalty, the Manchu usurpers in Peking's Forbidden City have put a price on Ling Fang's head. The pirate knows nothing about girls and agrees to shelter Shar-Li only if he can raise her as a boy.
An expert horseman (trained in Connecticut by her teenage crush, Thornton Clay), she excels at martial arts and becomes a second son to Ling Fang.
When Shar-Li turns 20, Ling Fang and Doh-Tzi tell her the truth about her parents: they were murdered on the orders of a cabal led by Prince Yung-Wah and Amos Wardlow. Ling Fang and Doh-Tzi order Shar-Li to return to Shanghai - as a woman - and avenge her parents' deaths.
Charlotte/Shar-Li arrives in Shanghai as a glamorous widow and sets in motion a series of calamities that would have done justice to the Count of Monte Cristo. She also discovered that Thornton Clay, the love of her life, is betrothed to Lavinia Wardlow.
This epic novel has been described as "a combination of Gone With the Wind, Taipan, and The Godfather".
