Orchids and the Orient: a riveting Victorian adventure
The Forbidden Orchid by Sharon Biggs Waller This exotic Victorian story leads us from a small English village into the dangerous depths of China. Seventeen year old Elodie Buchanan takes on the responsibility of accompanying her father to China to hunt for a particular orchid, the Queen's Fancy in order to restore the family fortunes. Mind you, her father is unaware that she has joined him on the clipper Osprey, fortuitously aided by Alexander Balashov the second mate, until near to the end of the voyage. Mr. Buchanan returned from his last plant hunt in the orient a broken man, having been caught up in the end of the Opium Wars with China in 1860 at Tien-Tsin, where he appears to have been captured and tortured. He's refused to see his family, has hidden out in a cottage in Kew Gardens, avoiding all. Unfortunately, as he didn't fulfill his orchid finding contract with the malevolent collector Mr. Erasmus Pringle, he is being forced to return t...