China Doll
Talia Carner

While American music icon Nola Sands is on a goodwill concert tour in China, a baby is thrust into her arms. Nola’s well-orchestrated life is thrown out of orbit as she bonds with the infant against her husband/manager’s plans. She resolves to save her from death in the dumping ground of China’s orphanages—only to find herself on a collision course with her label company’s business interests in the vast new market. Worse, the world's two superpowers, the U.S. and China's governments, are determined to silence her.

In a stunning story that begins with passion and ends with victory of an adoptive parent’s unwavering love, Nola's flight across China is a tale not only of human rights abuses running amok in an astonishingly picturesque land: it is the gripping self-discovery voyage of a woman coming into her own.

CHINA DOLL is set against the kaleidoscopic sights, sounds and smells of China's main cities and countryside. It is the story of an American adoptive mother, a celebrity, who challenges the unthinkable personal sacrifices demanded of individuals as the Chinese nation forfeits its glorious past and art in order to feed its people and move forward.

In arguments made on award-winning author Talia Carner’s website, she states: “China has 22% of the world’s population on only 7% of the arable land. It must exercise strict population control in order to feed its people and avoid the mass famine and death of the past. I am for population control. But I am not for coercion, late-pregnancy abortions, and infanticide.”

Carner’s new novel, CHINA DOLL, brings to the forefront the very real risk of population explosion in China and the urgent need to curtail its growth--juxtaposed against the tragic consequences of the traditional preference for boys.

Before turning to fiction writing, New York-based Talia Carner worked for Redbook Magazine and was the Publisher of Savvy Woman magazine. An adjunct professor of marketing at Long Island (NY) University and a marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies, she was a volunteer counselor and lecturer for the Small Business Administration and a member of United States Information Agency missions to Russia. Carner’s activities in women’s organizations led to her participation at the 1995 International Women's Conference in Beijing, where she learned of extent of the tragedy of abandoned baby girls--and their systematic gendercide. Further researching the subject for her second novel, CHINA DOLL, Carner traveled the Chinese countryside, spending long hours with women—university professors, industry directors, aging farmers, and budding entrepreneurs—over her jars of American peanut butter, chatting about life, work, and the role of women in both societies.

When writing CHINA DOLL, Carner spoke with former U.S. State Department officers and CIA agents, attended lectures about the Sino-US relationship, and received feedback from English-speaking Chinese writers. Contacts within the music industry afforded her a unique inside view and complemented her own knowledge of the business and corporate world to provide CHINA DOLL with the textural, eclectic background against which the plot unfolds.

“The issue of China’s infanticide will not go away in the near future without much effort and goodwill of Western charity organizations,” Carner says. “As it forges ahead with full steam, the Chinese government cannot deal with weaknesses among its citizens or use its limited resources on them. American- and European-based organizations have been tremendously helpful in changing the attitudes in China by offering a new perspective on human rights issues--and practical help.”

Talia Carner's first novel, PUPPET CHILD, was listed in The Top 10 Favorite Novels 2002 (BookBrowse.com) and won her an Outstanding Author Award (BookReviewCafe.com). The book launched The Protective Parent Reform Act, a law now passed or under consideration in over a dozen states, and has become the platform of a Senatorial candidate. Carner’s award-winning personal essays and short-stories were published in newspapers, literary magazines and anthologies.

An author, speaker and activist, Carner will use her book tour to create among her audiences the kind of goodwill charitable organizations--and Chinese orphanages--need. A portion of the sales of CHINA DOLL (the title refers not to the baby, but rather it is the name one of the protagonist’s detractors uses to describe her) will be donated to benefit abandoned Chinese babies. Her website posts links to organizations dedicated to improving conditions for abandoned children in China.

Ms. Carner, who had been adopted by her step-father, dedicated CHINA DOLL to him and to the bond they had shared for 35 years until his death. A second dedication is “to the voiceless abandoned babies of China.”

Please read more at www.TaliaCarner.com