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Lindsay has always known Singapore for its food, skyscrapers, and smart people. And now she knows a secret that could upend her world.
Lindsay Trapp, a promising scientist from Iowa, finds herself friendless after five lonely months in Singapore. Stuck living with her landlady’s dysfunctional family, she loses hope for happiness. Then, along comes a psychic who offers Lindsay her friendship, plus a love potion she claims cannot fail. Before long, a man of incredible fame and charm swoops into Lindsay’s life. It’s an improbable romance, yet magically perfect.
But the psychic friend has a secret Lindsay has promised to keep. A secret that could wreak tragedy in the landlady’s family. Lindsay is faced with an impossible choice: expose her friend and save the people she lives with, or bury the secret and keep her lover. My Friend from Raffles City is a heart-stirring page-turner, where a woman’s quest for happiness turns into a gamble with love.
My Friend from Raffles City is a 2024 IPPY medalist in the category of multicultural fiction.
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An old apartment building in Singapore is about to be demolished. But twenty-eight-year-old Jie-Li and her parents can’t afford a new place. When her job as a nurse becomes increasingly difficult, Jie-Li fears she can no longer support her ailing parents.
Thankfully, Mr. Kwok, a former neighbor, appears, offering Jie-Li good money to retrieve a family treasure he had left behind. Jie-Li charms her way into the apartment next door, where an American artist now lives, a naïve young man who aspires to travel the world. But as Jie-Li spends time in the apartment, repressed childhood memories of her painting pictures with Mr. Kwok begin to surface, forcing her to lose sight of her quest to save her family.
Little does she know that retrieving the lost treasure brings up the mind-blowing truth about her early years, the truth that may scar her for the rest of her life.
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Completed novel
Wildly imaginative and oddly naive, 37-year-old Natalie dreams of visiting architectural marvels in faraway places. But she has a disability that makes her physically sick when she looks at electronic screens. Dissatisfied with her night custodial job, she casts her dreams aside and pours her creativity into making dollhouses from scrap material.
One wintry night, she meets a 27-year-old man, a homeless graduate school dropout from Singapore, who aspires to become a YouTube creator. She thinks he’s here to complete her; he thinks she’s here to save him. They fall in love and she follows him to his hometown in Singapore, where he works as a property agent for his wealthy family’s real estate business. As Natalie struggles to avert electronic screens in every corner, she also discovers her knack for selling million-dollar properties for his family business. For the first time, Natalie is being taken seriously for her talents, and she finds it irresistible, especially when she also stumbles upon a possible cure for her disability. But then, to her frustration, he insists on having a simple life back in Iowa.
Now Natalie faces an impossible choice: return to Iowa with her lover, or chase the success that is finally within reach, even if she were to lose him altogether.
work in progress
Dr. Pippa Lim, a thirty-year-old molecular geneticist from Singapore, has gotten it all worked out: the Ph.D., the research job, the green card application, the smart boyfriend. While the regimented Singapore school system fails her, there is the American dream that will lead her to salvation. But then, when funding ceases abruptly at her research institute in San Diego, Pippa is forced to settle for employment with Dr. Roy Armstrong, a seemingly over-the-hill scientist who regards modern technology with a cynical eye. As she adapts to her new mentor’s quirky approach to research, she also rediscovers her childhood curiosity that has been obscured by her quest for success. And it would have been a perfectly mutualistic relationship between the two if Roy didn’t have one more task to ask of her—help find his ten-year-old daughter who has gone missing while visiting Singapore, a task Pippa wants to accomplish with all her heart, except it could mean giving up her American dream altogether.