Into the Tiger’s Mouth: A Novel of the China Trade, 1857-1863
The China Trade that boomed in the 1850s forms the backdrop for David Dana’s gripping, thrilling novel set in the China Sea, Hankow, Nanking, and especially Shanghai, where intrepid Yankee traders braved an alien world seething with internal dissent. One of Dana’s main character is Richard Perkins Starr, a member of a mercantile Boston family closely based on Dana’s own ancestor Richard Starr Dana, and Into the Tiger’s Mouth is based on the papers and letters of Richard Starr Dana and his contemporaries.
Phyllis Forbes Kerr’s book Letters from China and many other such modern histories detail the adventures these early traders experienced, and Dana’s Richard Starr faces many of them, everything from disease to treachery to the Taiping Rebellion. Dana personalizes all of this and brings it marvellously to life through a skilful combination of historical detail, fascinating insights, and catchy dialogue.
Along the way, readers watch Richard Starr’s fortunes constantly shifting – a kind of monetary backbone running through the book’s shifting scenes. Dana handles his story with considerable skill at both the panoramic and the personal; it is a very well-done job. Recommended.
