"Son of a wealthy Chinese railway administrator and his Swiss second wife, who soon left him, young David was brought up first by servants and then by an English stepmother in a Eurasian world of privilege, the Legation Quarter of Beijing. The Japanese invasion at first barely touched his family's charmed lives. But as the Japanese overran China, their world began to disintegrate.".

"China under Japanese occupation was a changed society fraught with secrecy and peril. David was sent away to school where he was taunted as a half-caste by the now openly anti-Western Chinese. His father served the pro-Japanese government while active in the Resistance. At their summer villa in Beidalhe, the family surreptitiously aided the guerillas in the nearby mountains. And in Qingdao, young David was befriended by the Japanese next door while his father hid a wounded U.S. airman in their house.".

"When the war ended, reprisals commenced. In the ensuing chaos, as Communists and Nationalists vied for power, his father was imprisoned for treason. And twelve-year-old David was despatched to relatives in Shanghai and then spirited out of the country, not knowing if he would ever see his father and stepmother again."--BOOK JACKET.