The Affair at Cloud Bay

In the harsh winter of 1902 desperate, starving white people in an isolated little Alaska gold mine town get their guns and drive every Chinese worker into the frozen forests to survive or die. The “old coolie” of THE AFFAIR AT CLOUD BAY does survive, and begins a small peaceful dynasty in the remoteness of a cloudy bay. And then Tom Archer arrives. Outlaws in tumultuous interior China open this 110,000 word mystery thriller with their shining lies of the outside world, taunting the Hong boy until his timid cluster of huts won’t hold him. Wandering, starving, he takes a stand in the middle of a busy Shanghai street and is delivered to his fortune as a bound pig is delivered to market. His sense of adventure is primordial, his willingness to endure, eternal. Hong’s resolve and ingenuity save him from death in the forest but it remains to be seen if he can save himself and his family from Tom Archer. Meanwhile, Tlingit Indians down the coast watch, avoid the brown beasts in the forest, and wait. In a squalid Washington coal town Tom Archer’s parents are married in the church of indifference. Tom is left to age as the porch is left to rot. Unforgivably betrayed, struggling against demons, he purges hateful passions against Orientals. Then, ugly, almost repulsive after torture to near death in the jungles of WWII Burma, Tom Archer finally settles into his own madness and flees to Cloud Bay. The author lived in China and in remote Alaska. He saw the bay with its burned cannery, and he knows the monstrous brown beasts that rule in the dripping forests. He has friends among the clever Tlingit Indians, and he knows where the gold is hidden in the ravine.