Nine Days by Fred Hiatt (review)

Ti-Anna’s father, a Chinese pro-democracy activist, has taken political refuge in the United States with his family, but he leaves suddenly for Hong Kong one day and soon thereafter drops out of contact with his daughter and wife. Accompanied by classmate Ethan and financed by his absent mother’s credit card, Ti-Anna flies to Hong Kong to catch the scent of her father’s trail. A wealthy businessman friend of her father gives the teens their first tip, leading them initially to a reclusive journalist and then on to a late-night meeting in a walled house, where Ti-Anna is abducted by human traffickers. Ethan orchestrates her rescue, and the pair tracks the father’s whereabouts to a Chinese prison, but there’s not much they realistically can do beyond releasing information of their discoveries to the press in hopes of bringing international pressure for his release. Nathan narrates the drama, and Ti-Anna remains a hazier figure than one might expect of so feisty and determined a heroine. However, Hiatt more than compensates for any weakness of character development with his vivid descriptions of the teens’ whirlwind travels among the islands of Hong Kong and on to Vietnam, integrating the geography and customs of the regions into the development of each episode. Although embellished with the conventions of a teen thriller, this story is based on the life of Chinese political prisoner Wang Bingzhang, whose daughter Ti-Anna continues to work for her father’s release, and who contributes one of the two background notes for the novel.