Spring Flower

At the height of the Korean War, with anti-American hostility at a fevered pitch, Jean Tren-Hwa Perkins' adoptive parents fled China, encouraging their daughter to serve her country and aid her people in whatever ways she could. Determined to fulfill their wishes, and her own, Jean worked to shed her American accent and study the culture and history of the land of her birth. Following in the footsteps of her medical missionary father, she became an ophthalmologist, practicing in Shanghai, a city relatively unscathed by Mao's ideologically driven economic policies. But her struggles were just beginning. Her daughter was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and then came the Cultural Revolution, decimating China physically, spiritually, and morally. As the Red Guards ramped up their rampage, Jean's husband Paul Hsiung, a renowned agronomist, was imprisoned on charges of criticizing the government, but she found the courage to survive thanks to the kindness of colleagues and the help of the angels who lived next door. This is Book Two of the three-volume Spring Flower series, and ends as Paul is released after four years in a labor camp, gaunt but not dispirited, and he and Jean dance on the verandah of their apartment to the music of Bing Crosby, while their son frolicks in the falling snow...