In the last years of the Tang Dynasty, a beautiful girl is born in a fort along the Great Wall of China, and is set to become the most famous and celebrated courtesan of her age. Set in the 9th century, Passing Under Heaven tells the tragic love story of Lily, and documents a time when Chinese women enjoyed a window of unprecedented personal freedom—including the freedom to fall in love. But when Lily pushes that freedom to its limits, disaster ensues, leaving her child and husband to forever mourn her loss. Based on historical fact, Passing Under Heaven is more than the story of the end of a love affair, but also a chronicle of the passing of the Chinese golden age into civil war and ruin.

Lily has found love and security as a child which she feels entitled to as an adult. Her husband's infidelity which is only seen in her eyes, has devastated her beyond reason. Her poetry is a way of showing life, the pain of it and the underlying calm of it. Lily is determined and full of strength but is this part of her downfall, her pride? The passions in this book grip the reader with such an intensity that when you have finished reading this book you will sit and stare and wonder because it will all seem so real that it is hard to walk away.......

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