Heather Corbally Bryant

In a way, these are two love stories. One is the love of this book's protagonist, Irene Kuhn, with her husband, Bert. The other is the love of the author with her grandmother Irene. Ms Kuhn was one of the first woman foreign correspondents. We follow her story from her docking in Shanghai in 1922 to her travel back to the states in 1926. A trip that started as a routine trip to visit her family and in-laws, but turned distantly tragic.

The author decided to make this a fictional piece as the subject needed full treatment, but the oral stories and later the Butterfly Box needed quite a bit of infill. The story shows the life of foreigners who hold posts in a rather exotic locale. It is clear that there was not a relationship with the locals outside of a servant relationship. However, Irene's daughter, Rene, had a strong relationship with her nanny (called an amah in Chinese) and had picked up a pidgin English. It is interesting that Irene and Bert traveled to Hawaii to have their daughter, being away for a half year.

China was in a storm of restiveness with an uprising in 1925, leading onto a General Strike. Irene traveled to Peking during this period and I enjoyed the description of this event. Thomas Dunn their doctor features in the story right through the inquest.

This book was a good look into a forgotten time in the 20th century. Writing this review, several months after publication, I found that only one library in Utica has picked up this book.… (altro)