THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2023 31 Journal from 2011 to 2013 and taught at American University and the National War College. Baroody is also the author of Casablanca Blue (2020). The Tea Merchant Leena Bhatnagar, independently published, 2022, $14.99/paperback, e-book available, 417 pages. Set in Boston in the weeks and months leading up to the 1773 Boston Tea Party, the precursor to the American Revolution, this novel by Leena Bhatnagar tells the story of a widowed tea merchant named Constance Pruitt who becomes a smuggler and spy for the Sons of Liberty. Hailing from a prominent family in New England, Constance is still mourning the death of her brother, whose murder three years prior remains unsolved. At 400-plus pages, The Tea Merchant covers Constance’s fight for independence from her Loyalist parents, who want to see her remarried in London, and her struggle against the British East India Tea Company’s sinister plans for the colonies. Along the way she meets various men—including several from the company—who propose marriage. She also meets a mysterious housekeeper who works for a handsome company man while hiding secrets of her own. History buffs will be interested in the descriptions of events leading up to the Boston Tea Party in colonial Massachusetts. Leena Bhatnagar is the daughter of Foreign Service Officer Alka Bhatnagar. She works as an economist at the U.S. Treasury Department and is a volunteer at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History. Shadow of the West: A Story of Divided Berlin Sarah Brotherhood Chapman, Black Rose Writing, 2023, $22.95/paperback, e-book available, 301 pages. In her debut novel, third culture kid Sarah Brotherhood Chapman follows the happenings of Kate, a new girl at Berlin American High School, and Anika, an East German girl who finds herself in danger on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Foreign Service kids will warm to the story of being the new person on
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