In War and Famine : Missionaries in China's Honan Province in The 1940s

While the principle narrator is Christensen's father, a young missionary doctor who, in a hair-raising journey, smuggled his family behind Japanese battlelines the year before Pearl Harbor, Christensen also tells the story of the many other missionaries who also sought to relieve the suffering of innocents caught in the crossfire of war and revolution - brave women who marched orphans through enemy lines, missionaries turned OSS intelligence officers, a Canadian Anglican cleric, a Swiss trainer of seeing-eye dogs, and a diplomat who travelled the province by bicycle. "The principle narrator of In War and Famine is the author's father, a young missionary doctor who, in a hair-raising journey, smuggled his family behind Japanese battlelines the year before Pearl Harbor. Erleen Christensen also tells the story of the many other missionaries who sought to relieve the suffering of innocents caught in the crossfire of war and revolution - brave women who marched orphans through enemy lines, missionaries turned OSS intelligence officers, a Canadian Anglican cleric, a Swiss trainer of seeing-eye dogs, and a diplomat who traveled the province by bicycle." "Using letters, diaries, and personal accounts, many still in private hands, Christensen provides an eye-witness account of how a religiously diverse group of Westerners tried to distribute famine relief and conduct humanitarian and educational missions in the face of rising nationalism, autonomy, and resistance to foreign intervention. In War and Famine is a devastating portrait of the terrible cost of war to civilians in China during World War II."--Résumé de l'éditeur "The principle narrator of In War and Famine is the author's father, a young missionary doctor who, in a hair-raising journey, smuggled his family behind Japanese battlelines the year before Pearl Harbor. Erleen Christensen also tells the story of the many other missionaries who sought to relieve the suffering of innocents caught in the crossfire of war and revolution - brave women who marched orphans through enemy lines, missionaries turned OSS intelligence officers, a Canadian Anglican cleric, a Swiss trainer of seeing-eye dogs, and a diplomat who traveled the province by bicycle." "Using letters, diaries, and personal accounts, many still in private hands, Christensen provides an eye-witness account of how a religiously diverse group of Westerners tried to distribute famine relief and conduct humanitarian and educational missions in the face of rising nationalism, autonomy, and resistance to foreign intervention. In War and Famine is a devastating portrait of the terrible cost of war to civilians in China during World War II."--Jacket In War and Famine uses a small key - the author's family letters and infant memories - to unlock a whole world. Erleen Christensen was a "mish kid", the daughter of one of about two hundred missionaries who remained in China's Honan Province during World War II and the civil war that followed. She provides an eye-witness account using letters, diaries, and personal accounts, many still in private hands, of one of the worst famines in China's history and the great devastation caused by advancing Japanese troops. Christensen chronicles how a religiously diverse group of Westerners tried to distribute famine relief and conduct humanitarian and educational missions in the face of rising nationalism, autonomy, and resistance to foreign intervention. (Midwest) The principle narrator of In War and Famine is the author's father, a young missionary doctor who, in a hair-raising journey, smuggled his family behind Japanese battlelines the year before Pearl Harbor. Erleen Christensen also tells the story of the many other missionaries who sought to relieve the suffering of innocents caught in the crossfire of war and revolution - brave women who marched orphans through enemy lines, missionaries turned OSS intelligence officers, a Canadian Anglican cleric, a Swiss trainer of seeing-eye dogs, and a diplomat who travelled the province by bicycle.