Mira sighed. “It’s not easy to bring a stranger into your home, Chaiky. And you don’t need more problems on your head right now.”

“But Ima,” her daughter said gently, “Anna wasn’t a stranger. You knew her very well, at least by the time she came to live with you.”

Mira took a deep breath. Chaiky had honed right in on the reason for her hesitation, even before she herself could put her finger on it. Chaiky was right: she didn’t like the idea because of Anna.

*******

It’s a lonely and frightening existence for Chaiky Struk, with her husband far away, incarcerated in Russia due to a set-up by the Mafia. The niggling knowledge that the whole terrible saga could have been prevented makes the blow even harsher, especially for a woman as meticulously organized, responsible, and efficient as herself.

Just as Chaiky feels that her life cannot become any worse, it does, in the form of a new co-worker named Noa who, from the outset, seems intent on putting Chaiky down. Then, into this roiling cauldron, steps Rachel, a young, seemingly guileless teenager in need of a home. Despite her parents’ bad experience with Anna, the girl they’d invited to live in their home, Chaiky decides to take Rachel in as a boarder. Never does she dream of the vast, life-changing impact this move will have, on both herself and her family…

Night Flower is the deeply touching, emotionally charged, yet intensely suspenseful story of a family in crisis who learns that often, it’s during the darkest of nights that one’s inner mettle shines brightest.

By Esther Rapaport, author of Blood Brothers, The Kenya Conspiracy, Dance of the Puppet, and The Cuckoo Clock.