Book Beginning: A MAP OF BETRAYAL by Ha Jin

The Friday 56: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.

A Map of Betrayal: A Novel by Ha Jin, published November 4, 2014 by Pantheon.
Genre: historical fiction, spy novel

Book beginning:

My mother used to say, "Lilian, as long as I'm alive, you must have nothing to do with that woman." She was referring to Suzie, my father's mistress. 

"Okay, I won't," I would reply. 

Nellie, my embittered mother, had never forgiven my father for keeping another woman, though he'd died many years before. I kept my promise. I did not approach Suzie Chao until my mother, after a tenacious fight against pancreatic cancer, succumbed last winter. Death at eighty - I can say she lived a long life. 

Page 56: 

On the very afternoon he checked into a mall hotel on Queen's Road in downtown Hong Kong, he called Bingwen, who was delighted to hear about his arrival and eager to see him. 

Book description: A tale of espionage and conflicted loyalties that spans half a century in the entwined histories of two families and two countries—China and the United States.

Found at the library, a spy novel I'm looking forward to reading.