In 1929, an American woman traveled from her home in China to settle her severely impaired daughter in a New Jersey institution. She did so with borrowed money, as she could not afford the fees. The parting was excruciating; she was, she recalled, “nearly destroyed by grief and fear.” The house felt empty on her return to Nanjing, but she knew precisely what to do: “This I decided was the time to begin really to write.”