"Bea Exner Liu, a solid young Minnesota woman, headed for a job in China during the Depression, married a fellow Carleton graduate, and spent the next ten years in a nation gripped by the tragedies of war, social disruption, deprivation, uncertainty - and yet a China of bravery, resiliency, and stoicism. This spare, barely-fictional account of the lives of Bea, her husband, and the ordinary people around them, is unforgettable for the reader, just as the events she describes still live in the memories of China's older generations. Americans should read, and ponder, this humane memoir of an American life in a China now massively, but not unrecognizably, transformed"--Cover.