Perfect Harmony

One of the things that puts Barbara Wood into a class of her own in historic, adventure and now also in biotech thriller writing: her thorough background research. She puts a lot of work into creating a complex and rich historical as well as atmospheric background for her lead characters. And she does it quite well for characters from foreign cultural background: the main character in "Perfect Harmony" is Charlotte Lee, a young Chinese-American woman. She is the CEO of Harmony Biotech, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in Chinese herbal medicine. As dramatic events unfold in present time and Charlotte sees her company, her professional existence and her life threatened, Wood unfolds the story of Charlotte's family and the history of the company in an equally engaging parallel storyline, and drama picks up on the mystery as well as the romantic level. Barbara Wood is the master of generation-spanning scenarios and great family sagas, as she has demonstrated before in her Egyptian tale "Virgins of Paradise" and the Australian saga "Dreamtime". Even when her sometimes a bit overly dramatic and predictably romantic heroines every once in a while come across as old-fashioned, this does not compromise the overall quality of her storytelling. Wood is a wonderful storyteller and is performing at her best in "Perfect Harmony". Pick it up, kick off your shoes and don't plan anything else for the weekend.

Barbara Wood has written a treasure of literature. I adored the Prophetess and Perfect Harmony was a tanatmount to the splendor of the former. Charlotte Lee's pharmaceutical company is in peril. A saboteur has poisoned some remedies and therefore destroyed her name and the reputation of her company and asks her to give a press conference confessing that she tainted the medicine in 12 hours. But these 12 hours aren't just a wait. She discovers the secrets forever hidden under the dusty patina of time waiting to be unearthed. Barbara Wood takes us on a timeless and unforgettable ride through 4 generations of Chinese women uncovering secrets and mysteries of a lost land of ancient traditions and mysticism called Singapore and a modern world of pragmatism, skullduggery, technology, and power we know as America. Charlotte spans the continents and returns to the legacy of her ancestors, a wisdom more valuable than her life and older than her years, as she fights against a nemesis locked in cyberspace and another more important enemy, the memories of her past. The past that will save her. A must-read for anyone.

This is the first book of our newly formed book club at work. Five of us at our office have read this book together. We would meet for lunch to discuss each of the sections read. Great book....we will use Barbara Wood again.

I read Barbara Wood's novel The Prophetess a few months ago, and I was so excited to learn that she had a new book coming out. This was just as good as The Prophetess, or even better, since the ending left me more satisfied. I love the way the book moves back and forth between two time periods, and the family relations that are not what they seem. Also, I learned a lot about Chinese culture and herbal medicine from reading this book.

From Kirkus Reviews, Jan 15, 1998 "A breathless, helter-skelter race in cyberspace, effortlessly melded here with the tale of a Chinese woman's journey from the 1920's to the present, and with her granddaughter's terrifying chase to solve familial mysteries and industrial murder."Charlotte Lee is CEO of Harmony Biotech, manufacturers of ancient Chinese herbal medicines, now carefully monitored for safety and reliability through the best modern technology. Charlotte, who inherited the business from Perfect Harmony, her late grandmother,must suddenly face the accusation that three people have died after ingesting her products. Having been warned by V.P. (and cousin)Desmond, Charlotte drives out into awful weather (a tempest appropriately pounds away at California through much of the action) and is almost killed in a freak accident (or was it?). There are other unsettling near misses involving Charlotte's friends, and a message on the Internet advises her to make a public statement of company guilt within the next 12 hours -- or else. Then into the intensifying miseries comes Jonathan, Charlotte's long-lost love who had inexplicably married another. Jonathan sets to work to make computer magic and unravel the conspiracy. Wood jumps back then to 1908 Singapore to relate the history of Perfect Harmony and her years of trial, suffering, and triumph. Before the close, with a starburst of revelations and one *big* surprise, there are family tangles to pick apart (odd couplings and adoptions); a touch of the supernatural as dead mothers speak; vendettas (one involving a government agent); a B-screamer interlude with Charlotte trussed to a bottling conveyor belt; and, of course, the happy romantic union."As ever, Wood ("The Prophetess" etc) shows herself a wizard at juggling action and romance, maintaining the momentum and sparkle of both. Bright, slick, and pleasing."