The Good War of Consul Reeves
The book is set during WWII in the Portuguese colony of Macao, a tiny town of baroque churches, shaded arcades around town squares and pastel houses, improbably located on the south coast of China. In December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and soon had conquered vast stretches of southeast Asia. But when they arrived at the walls of Macao, they made the unlikely decision to respect Portuguese neutrality and halt. From 1941 to 1945, Macao was a small island of neutrality, surrounded by thousands of miles of hostile Japanese-occupied Asia. It was an Asian Casablanca, with spies, refugees, bandits and smugglers, a Portuguese governor in a pink palace, and a Japanese and a British consul.
The Good War of Consul Reeves is the story of Macao at that time, told through the eyes of the young British consul there, John Reeves. His career and marriage failing, Reeves found himself the only representative of the Allies for thousands of miles. He rose to the occasion: he protected, housed and fed thousands of British and American refugees, he ran spy rings, he arranged for refugees to be smuggled to safety through hundreds of miles of Japanese-occupied and bandit-infested China and he was the target of assassins. He was almost killed when the Americans
accidentally bombed Macao.
The book, a work of historical fiction, very closely follows the historical record. It is based on over three years of extensive research in archives in New York, Washington, Miami, London, Canberra, Hong Kong and Macao. It is the first book on this subject intended for a general audience.