Newly graduated photography student Lori Maddox spends the year after university travelling and visits China where she finds work as a private English tutor. Back in Manchester, her parents Jo and Tom, who separated when Lori was a toddler, follow her adventures on her blog, 'Lori In The Orient'. Suddenly communication stops and when the silence persists a frantic Jo and Tom report her missing. It is impossible to find out anything from 5,000 miles away so they travel out to Chengdu, a city in the south-western province of Sichuan, to search for their daughter. Landing in a totally unfamiliar country, with no knowledge of the customs or language, and receiving scant help from the local authorities, Jo and Tom are forced to turn detective, following in their daughter's footsteps, tracing the people she mentioned in her posts, interviewing her friends, colleagues and students. It's an unbearably difficult challenge and, as the days pass, the fear that Lori is lost for good grows ever larger.acing the people she mentioned in her posts, interviewing her friends, colleagues and students. It's an unbearably difficult challenge, made harder as all the reasons for the breakdown of their relationship twenty years earlier resurface with a vengeance. When a woman's remains are discovered close to the last sightings of Lori it appears that they have found their daughter and a murder inquiry is launched. Devastated, they wait for the police to solve the case, desperate to know who killed Lori and why. But nothing is straightforward and there are more shocks to come before they can leave for home . . .