A fictional biography of Pearl S. Buck in which the author, as a child, forms a friendship with a young Chinese girl that follows the women through adulthood as they deal with matters of love, loyalty, and repression.
Presents an historical novel about China's Empress Tzu Hsi, who ruled China for nearly fifty years in the second half of the nineteenth century amidst threats by Japan, Russia, France, and England as well as insurgents within her own country.