The story of one woman’s journey from poverty to privilege to persecution, and her determination to survive as history and circumstance swirled around her. Tren-Hwa (“Spring Flower”) was born in a dirt-floored hut near the Yangtze River in central China during the catastrophic floods of 1931. Her father was so upset she was a girl that he stormed out of the hut, and she was given up for adoption to a missionary couple, Dr. Edward Perkins and his wife Georgina. Renamed Jean Perkins, she attended English-speaking schools in China, went to high school in New York near the Hudson River, and after World War II returned to China with her parents. Spring Flower is both eyewitness history and the memoir of a young girl growing up in extraordinary times, including the brutal Japanese occupation of China, and the communist takeover and its aftermath. Jean’s story incredibly includes chance encounters with the most important figures of the era: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mao Tse-tung. In 1950, with the Korean War raging, Jean’s adoptive parents had to flee China, leaving her behind...