The Bridge of a Hundred Dragons

Well researched and buttressed by family memoirs, this adventure/romance set in the 1920s conveys the period of confusion preceding the Chinese Revolution. The British establishment, typified by the Mostyns of Shanghaia wealthy mercantile family with a madcap, ""liberated'' daughterare slow to face the reality of the revolutionary menace. Mostyn, a master manipulator, impresses the services of Major Mark Rawlings of the Royal Engineers, a heroic escapee from the Russian Civil War, to rebuild a trouble-plagued railway. Despite his misgivings, Rawlings succumbs to young Alexandra Mostyn. Their love story is threaded through scenes that illuminate Shanghai's corrupt subculture and heedless English ruling class, threatened by the imminence of the Kuomintang revolutionary army and the ambivalence created by Chiang Kai-shek. Scenes in which Rawlings copes with the savagery of superstitious coolies in rebuilding the haunted bridge are memorable. Drummond, under the pseudonym Elizabeth Darrell, wrote Beyond All Frontiers. (June 30)