Winter Melon

Gong Ree is a feisty seventeen-year-old living in China in 1937. He has a prominent family, with a prosperous winter melon farm located just outside of China's provisional capital, Nanking. It is a troubling time. The Japanese army threatens to invade Nanking. Many Chinese citizens are in grave danger and stand to lose everything should the invasion come. Warnings to evacuate come from family friends, most notably from Sir Farnsworth, an English diplomat and longtime friend of the Gongs. A Chinese soldier, who befriends the stand-offish Ree and becomes her first love, also implores them to leave. But Gong Chou, the family patriarch, stubbornly refuses to leave his farm and legacy. His pride will cost him dearly.