The Middle Heart

by Lord, Bette

• ISBN13: 9780394534329
• ISBN10: 0394534328
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-02-01
• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc

Summary

It is the summer of 1932, the year the Japanese conquered Manchuria, China's northeast region. Three children meet and become best friends for the summer, and blood brothers for a lifetime. They are: Steel Hope, the second son of the House of Li, a once-great clan which survives now on handouts from his grandfather, a merchant who trafficks whith the Japanese; Steel Hope's "bookmate," Mountain Pine, Steel Hope's servant and conscience; and the irrepressible Firecrackers, daughter of the Li's gravekeeper, who masquerades as a boy to take the place of a brother killed years earlier by the Japanese. At the end of the summer a tragic event -- a good deed gone awry -- splits them apart until they are grown. During the subsequent years of war and cultural upheaval, the destinies of the three friends are realized -- their loyalty to each other tested by the demands of politics and patriotism, and by the question of where honor and obligation lie when confronted by love.

Author Biography

Bette Bao Lord was born in Shanghai in 1938. She emigrated to America with her parents during China's Civil War; they settled in Brooklyn, where she grew up. She attended Tufts University and received an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she met her husband, Winston Lord, who was the American Ambassador to China from November 1985 through April 1989.<br><br>Bette Bao Lord has received a number of awards, including honorary doctorates from Tufts and Notre Dame, and in 1989 was named a "woman of the year" (along with Simone Weil) by the International Women's Forum (other honorees include Margaret Thatcher and Corazon Aquino). She is currently the chair of the Freedom Foundation in Washington, D.C.