A Curious Life : The Biography of Princess Peggy Abkhazi

Tight and unmarked-" When Peggy Abkhazi died in 1994 in her adopted hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, she left behind a life of privilege. Reigning with her royal Georgian husband over the internationally acclaimed Abkhazi Garden, she had come far from her orphanhood in the industrial slums of Lancaster, England. Peggy's tumultuous ninety-two years intersected watershed events and locations of the twentieth century. She lived on the English Channel during the First World War, studied music in Paris in the bohemian twenties, and led a socialite's life in Shanghai during its racy thirties heyday. Most significantly, she was kept a prisoner in Japanese-occupied Shanghai for more than two years of the Second World War--an experience she took great risk to document in a clandestine journal. Despite many suitors, she remained unmarried for much of her life, acting as a companion and caregiver to her adoptive mother. Peggy Abkhazi not only overcame adversity but turned it to her advantage, embracing life with humor and grace at every turn. A Curious Life tells the remarkable story of this strong, charismatic woman, from England to China to Canada; from pauper to prisoner to princess."