Francine

Francine will appeal to readers who love strong female protagonists, corporate romance and intrigue, and international settings.In the aftermath of the 2008 financial breakdown, bright young Francine from a small town in West Virginia tries to find work at an investment bank in New York, but nobody's hiring. On the advice of her dad, she approaches an old friend of her father, Jim O'Hara, who runs a successful international mining conglomerate from New York and is on the hunt for a clever personal assistant.Jim is impressed by her unconventional personality and quick wit, and Francine scores the job. She is quickly thrust into a frenetically paced corporate environment and rises through the ranks with astonishing speed. Her sorority friend Nancy Smith neatly sums up her preternatural talent for solving problems: "And you have that special gift of knowing what to do when nobody else does."Smart and decisive, she faces company problems head-on, at home, and in far-away lands, unperturbed by setbacks and internal intrigue until she is confronted with a serious corruption scandal in China perpetrated by the company managers she trusted most. This conundrum forces her to make dire choices. To her relief, she meets a man she once met before in awkward circumstances. Can he support her in her lonely struggle to save the company?